IMITATIONS

OF

ELEBRATED AUTHORS;

OR,

IMAGINARY REJECTED ARTICLES.

-

FOURTH EDITION.

LONDON :
PUBLISHED FOR HENRY COLBURN,

1844.

PR

rr

\,

1 9 1364

OF

ifj i*

CONTENTS.

PAGE.

AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. By Elia. - C. L. 1

RICH AND POOR, A Letter from William Cobbett
to the Ploughboys and Labourers of Hamp-
shire. - ------ W. C. 31

TO-MORROW. A Gaiety and Gravity. By one of

the Authors of Rejected Addresses. - - H. S. 65

DEMONIACALS. (Posthumous.) By Childe Harold

The Token. -------- 79

Remonstrance. ------- 82

Stanzas. --------- 85

DINING OUT. By one of the Authors of Re-
jected Addresses. - H. S. 87

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. Romeo and Juliet. J. W. Ill

GRIMM'S GHOST. The Culpeppers on the Con-
tinent. By the other Author of Rejected
Addresses. ---------- J. S. 141

SPIRIT OF THE AGE. Portrait of William

Hazlitt. W. H. 165

LONDON LETTERS TO COUNTRY COUSINS. - P. G. P. 209

BROTHER JONATHAN. Rejected from the Edin-
burgh Review. ----_.__ F. J. 261

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. A Tale of the

Greenwood-Shade. L. H. 313

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

BY ELIA.

AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.

BY ELIA.

READER, thou art haply one of those persons who
feel themselves bound in honour to earn (in their
own estimation) whatever title it may please others
to bestow upon them. If so, reading thyself every
day addressed as " reader," (not to reckon the
flattering additaments of " gentle," " generous,"
" tasteful," " learned," " critical," and so forth,)
thou hast doubtless felt thyself constrained in con-
science to prove the validity of thy title, by perus-
ing every Work (so we puny moderns are minded
to denominate our poor, pigmy productions) that
comes before thee in a questionable shape : mean-
ing thereby, every one that thou art in the least
likely to be questioned about, as to whether it has
been perused by thee, or not. In this case, thou
hast perchance whiled away an odd half hour now
and then, in turning over and tasting the leaves of

4 REJECTED ARTICLES.

certain lucubrations, crewhile- distilled by driblet*
from the adust brain of one Elia.

I will suppose thou hast, at any rate. An author
would drive a sorry trade indeed, if he were not
privileged to suppose the case of his having readers.
To nine out of ten it is the only means of securing
any. And even to the tenth it is much the same.

Thou hast read Elia, then, and art therefore not
absolutely incognizant of the turn of his humours
and oddities, and the character which habit and
nature, uniting together, have succeeded (and failed)
in impressing upon his mental and bodily man.
I put it to thy candour, then, whether, being thus
informed, if any but Elia himself were to come
and make averment before thee, that they had
encountered his pale face, and attenuated form,
beyond the confines of his own England, thou
wouldest not have treated the talc as an ingenious,
albeit an ill-conceived fiction, and greeted the
teller with a glance chiefly compounded of the
incredulus odi ?

Perchance thou sufferest the equivocal happiness
of being, like Elia himself, a pun-propounder : (for
punster is " a weak invention of the enemy " of puns,
and not to be uttered by one who honours them :) in
which case thou wilt doubtless exclaim, " Elia in-
continent ! it cannot be ;" and wilt add, — as Othello

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 5

did when a charge of being similarly situated
was made against his gentle mistress, — " I'll not
believe it!"

Thou art altogether in the right, and Elia him-
self hereby thanks thee for thy well-placed confi-
dence in his consistency. And yet Elia himself is
at the same time constrained to assure thee, that
thou art altogether as wrong as thou art right :
for nothing is more easy (and hard) than to be
entirely both, in regard to one and the same matter.

Look at the transparent tegument (mis-named
paper) on which these uneven words are ecrivated .
On turning it over, thou mayest, by following the
fashion of the Hebrew, read them almost as well
on the wrong side as on that which is not the
right. Glance thine eye, too, towards the top of
the page. It is dated " Calais." There is no
gainsaying the fact. Elia is, like Bottom, " trans-
lated " from his own modest, low-roofed parlour,
looking out upon the little Ever-Green (here they
would think it a strip of baize) that stretches
before the plain, uni-painted door of his quiet
domicile, in the suburban village of " Shacklewell,
near Hackney, near London, England — " for such
is the endless supererogation which he is obliged
to inscribe upon the letter which he has just dis-
patched (what a word, when they tell rne it will

6 REJECTED ARTICLES.

not reach her these three days !) to his dear cousin
Bridget — he is translated, I say, from the above
spot (apt title, spot, when compared with the " in-
finite space" of which at present he is denizen)
to a magnificent Scene in the Play which seems
to be continually acting here, called " Dessin's
Hotel."

Reader, if thou wilt accord me a more than
ordinary share of thy patience, I will recount how
this seeming inconsequentially came about : for
thy confidence in its unlikelihood merits my confi-
dence in return.

As I have begun supposing for thee, I may
as well go on. I suppose, then, that thou art
not ignorant of the signal change which, a brief
while ago, (brief it is by the book, though to
me it already seems an age — so crowded has it been
with thoughts, feelings, fancies, imaginations, and
what not), took place in my terrene condition, in
virtue of my becoming a " superannuated man."
Some of the consequences of this change I have
elsewhere related ; but the " greatest is behind."

If thou hast perused, reader, the relation I have
just alluded to, touching the first impressions of a
man who just begins to feel his freedom press upon
him, with a weight

" Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life,"

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 7

thou wilt readily conceive * * * * . In
short, something was evidently * * * * .
Besides which * * * *.

And moreover, what so natural to expect from
Elia, under extraordinary circumstances, as that
which nobody who knew him would expect from
him?

Suffice it that I " made up my mind" to go.
(The phrase is singularly " german to the matter" —
that is to say, not within some hundreds of miles
of expressing what it is meant to express : but let
it pass.) So I clapped a shirt in my pocket; (it
is hard that we cannot do the simplest of actions
without incurring the suspicion of being imitatores
servum pecus : people will say I borrowed the
idea, of putting a clean shirt in my pocket, from
Yorick : as if the abstract idea of a clean shirt did not
instinctively become apart of every man's conscious-
ness, the moment he thinks of leaving home !) I put
a shirt into my pocket ; hurried a kiss, with no very
firm or florid lip, on the faded cheek of my cousin
Bridget ; (we have never been separated for twelve
hours since we came together twice twelve years
agone); got into the Shackle well stage, as was my
wont every morning for all those years ; and as
wont also, when it set me down at the Bank as
usual, I proceeded towards my accustomed haunt

8 REJECTED ARTICLES.

in Leadenhall Street, and should assuredly have
taken my accustomed seat on the accustomed
stool, but that, just as I was stepping up, un-
der the magnificent portico of that Palace of
Commerce, I felt an wrcaccustomed weight — not
upon my heart, reader : I declare to thee that that
waxed lighter and lighter every step I approached
towards the spot where its rest had so long been
set up ; but — bobbing against the calf of my sinis-
ter leg. It was the bundle that Bridget had
squeezed into my pocket. This roused me from
my reverie ; and I turned back, just so as to reach
in time the great monster that was to bear me on
its back, (not more against my will than that of the
water,) to the shores of France.

T HE VOYAGE.

I hate all Steam, and all that it can do ; except
when it comes singing its soft sweet tune, from
out the mouth of a half bright, half black tea-
kettle, on a December evening fire. But above
all I hate it, when, as I have chanced to see it
once or twice, it gets possession (like a bad demon)
of some otherwise dead hull, and drives it, scram-
bling, splashing, heaving, straining, and roaring
along, up our noble river Thamisis, belching forth

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 9

fire and smoke, and invading, terrifying, and
polluting the sweet solitudes of Twickenham and
Richmond, with its hideous brawl.

I once watched one of these new " infernal
machines/' as it came towards me while I was
wandering under those fine old trees near Bran-
denburg House ; and I perceived that the poor
victim of Steam was straining itself against the
water, and lifting its breast partly out, at every
stroke of its relentless task-master ; just as a half-
heart-broken stage-coach horse strains against the
collar, up a steep hill, at the stroke of the whip.
And yet the stroke came (as it does in the other
case) as regular as clock-work. There was
" damnable iteration " in it ; it sent me home
sick ; and I have hated Steam better than ever,
ever since.

And yet here did I find myself, at eleven of the
clock on a sweet sunshiny day of September, in the
actual clutches of this abhorred power ; prepared,
nay expecting to be borne by it — to the clouds, as
likely as not, in a clap of thunder ; and to come
down from thence, scorched to a cinder, and hiss
as I fell into the water, and sunk at once to the
bottom like a bit of burnt coal !

When I am in good health, (good, I mean, for me,)
and have my wits about me, I feel but one care con-

10 REJECTED ARTICLES.

cerning Death: it is that I may meet him not
absolutely unlooked for, arid in my own bed with
the old dark crimson damask hangings ; and with
my cousin Bridget not beside me. And yet here
was I, willingly, or rather wilfully, putting myself
in the way of half a dozen of the most hideous
of all deaths, (for the name of Steam is not one but
Legion,) without even having a choice in them.

It was not to be thought of. So I seated my-
self at once on the first projection that came to
hand — looked down towards my feet — and as I
heard the bowels of the great creature begin to
grumble within it, and felt its body move be-
neath me, luckily the thought came across me
of Sinbad the sailor, when he was inveigled, by
some unaccountable fascination, to trust himself
on the back of the Old Man of the Sea.

This recollection, by virtue of the associations I
had connected with it, partly restored me from
myself; and I did not return till I was called back
by an indescribable jargon of tongues, as if some
foreign Bedlam or Bank Rotunda had broke loose
at midnight — from which I could gather nothing,
but that I was actually arrived in the port of
Calais. But this was more than enough ; so I re-
signed myself into the hands of fate, under the
form of a French waiter, and after a few ceremo-

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 11

nies which I did not seek to understand, found
myself in a spacious sleeping apartment of

I am not the person to go gadding after other
men's fancies. I have enough to do to keep pace
with my own. I was never fond of " follow my
leader," even at school. I would not follow, and
did not want to lead. And yet, reader, I am fain
to confess to thee, that peradventure if it had not
been for Hogarth and Sterne, " The gates of
Calais" would never have shut upon Elia ; and
even if they had, the hundred harpies from its
Hotels would in all probability have divided him
amongst them, instead of one being permitted to
spirit him away in the name of " Dessin" in parti-
cular.

To be sure there is, in regard to the latter
point, something to be said for the determina-
tion which the before-named one had evidently
formed, as to the necessity of my following him,
and no one else. " Sare — you shall go to Mister
Dessin," he repeated, close into my ear, twenty
times at least. And when a man shall do a thing,
he must. So I went.

1:2 REJECTED ARTICLES.

I need scarcely tell the " travelled " reader, that
on this first moment of my setting foot in a foreign
land, I was in no disposition to note very carefully
the localities through which I was led by the
absolute person into whose hands I fell. It must
suffice to say, that I retired to my unrest, in the
midst of indistinct and confused visions, of an im-
measurable Gateway, an illimitable Court-yard,
an incomprehensible Coach and Horses, an unin-
telligible Chambermaid, and an inaccessible Bed.

My dreams on that night favoured me by being
more fantastical than I have known them for
many a long year : for, as I think I have other-
where informed thee, reader, I am but a poor hand
at dreaming. My dreams put me out of conceit
of myself. Anybody might dream them. But on
that night, methought, among other matters, that
I suddenly sank into the sea, and was (Jonas-like)
swallowed by a whale ; and that the passage
through his throat to his belly, where I lodged,
was exactly like that between Lombard Street and
Cornhill, where Mr. Myers the fishmonger lives,
and that it smelt of fish much the same as that
does ; and that, when I had got through it, I
found myself in a great paved court-yard, the
extremities of which I could not see, which was
partly lighted by what seemed to be the creature's

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 13

great lidless eye ; and that, while I was passing
across its dreary spaciousness, I heard a number
of what the children call crackers go offjust outside,
and then saw, by the glimmering light, a sort of
carriage like Neptune's conch come clattering in,
drawn by three animals, (a-breast,) which seemed to
be compounded of half Meux's dray-horses, half
mermaids ; and from the side of one of which I
could see depending that enormous sign of a Boot
and Spur, which has so long delighted the eyes of
all the urchins who inhabit the Borough of South-
wark. Methought, too, as I looked up towards
the ceiling of my new apartment, it seemed to be
intersected by enormous black beams, just like
my cousin's great barn at Mackery End, in Hert-
fordshire, where I used to sit upon the wheat-
sheaves, and read Burton : and yet I could see
the stars shine through it.

Then all of a sudden I heard an enormous ex-
plosion, and found myself flying through the air,
seated astride upon a great piece of burning wood,
rudely carved into the form of a rocking-horse ;
which I held by, exactly as John Gilpin in the
prints does by the neck of his horse. And I re-
member very well fancying, as I shot through the
air, and got glimpses of the flaming tail of my steed

14 REJECTED ARTICLES.

flaring out behind me, how the philosophers of
London would proclaim me a Comet, and call it by
the name of Elia !

Then, as suddenly, I found myself quietly seat-
ed in a great unknown room, by the side of an un-
known tent-like erection, beneath which was
what bore some resemblance to a bed ; and
around were various objects, which I did not
take the trouble to examine — especially as, in
divesting myself of my nether garments, prepa-
ratory to trying whether the seeming bed was a
bed or not, I found that they came away piece-
meal, and were in fact scorched to a cinder.

This seemed to disconcert me more than the
nature of the accident warranted ; and I got up
hastily, to ring the bell, and call for another pair,
just as I would have called for a pint of wine — (for
1 now seemed to recollect that I was at an inn)
—when, taking hold of the great ring which hung
to the bell-rope, I pulled it somewhat impatiently
— and lo i it seemed to produce as miraculous
effects as the pull or cut of the Sultan, in the Ara-
bian Nights, at the ring revealed to him by his
faithful Vizier. Mr. Dessin's hotel seemed to
stand before me for a moment, like a scene on the
stage, and then, like that, sunk into the earth at

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 15

the sound of the bell I had pulled — the Gates of
Calais (which formed part of the back scene) came
clattering about the ears of their astonished keep-
ers— the Sea in the distance was changed into the
Strand, with its gas-lights and coaches just when
the Play is over ; — and the next moment I found my-
self seated beside my cousin Bridget, in our own
quiet parlour, and Betty was just entering to ask
whether it was the bed -candle that I had rung
for.

My late friend Tobin makes Juliana say, (pret-
tily enough, under the circumstances of the scene,
I .remember,) " we cannot help our dreams." But
what is a great deal worse, we cannot help telling
them. If all the above incoherences had actually
and bonajide befallen me, I verily believe, reader,
I should have had too much respect for thy time
and patience (to say nothing of my taste) to think of
relating them to thee ; because there is nothing to
be extracted from them in any way tending to thy
moral instruction, or even to thy mental delectation.
But because they have not happened to me, and
could not, I have been tempted to record them.

This is one of the most unpardonable imperti-
ncneics of which any of us .are guilty. If I
ever for a moment think that my cousin Bridget
talks too much, or not wisely, it is. when she

16 REJECTED ARTICLES.

is telling me of some strange dream that she
has had. Nobody should ever tell their dreams,

but C -. Even dc Q— - should leave it off,

now that he has left off that which made his
dreams so marketable a commodity.

Travelled reader, I would fain have thee believe,
that in the midst of my humours and oddities, I
am not an altogether unreasonable specimen of
the human animal — I mean in respect of those of
his intellectuals by which he carries on the daily
business of his life. Thou opinest, perhaps, that
beoause I have hitherto been content (howbeit,
" on compulsion," yet not the less sincerely there-
fore) to pass my days within the atmosphere of
the Great City, (for my retreat at Shacklewell is a
retreat from her noise only, not a recession from
beneath that noble canopy of congregated clouds
which constantly hangs over her head, queen-like,)
— therefore I do keck and reluct at the taste and
odour of any atmosphere which has the dement of
being more pure, and quarrel with every form
that comes before me, not moulded on the accus-
tomed model.

In this thou deceivest thyself, and discreditest
me. In respect of feelings, fancies, modes of
belief, and the like, I do agnize a certain de-
gree of wilful predisposition. But in what re-

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNRY. 17

lates to form, to matter, to manner, to taste,
to sound, to smell, in short all pertaining
to our sensuous and animal nature, 1 do stre-
nuously assert my entire freedom from preju-
dice and pre-occupation. What if I do cherish
a somewhat inordinate passion for Roast Pig,
and am even prepared (peace-lover as I am) to
place spear in rest to prove the pre-eminence of
that dulcet refection, over every other in the whole
circle of my muttdns edibilis? Yet assuredly I
speak but of my world. I am no mad-brained
Quixote in this matter. Far be it from me to be-
lie vQ,prima facie, much less to insist, that a sucking
Kangaroo, treated in a similar manner, may not be
as good. (Perhaps my friend B. F. is able to speak
to this point.) And if your Cannibal, who is " your
only emperor for diet," were to twit me with the
superlative savoriness of a roasted Christian, as-
suredly I should not dispute the point with him.
I am not in a condition to determine. I have never
tasted one ; and according to the calculable probabi-
lities of the case, never may.

After this open confession, reader, thou wilt not
see cause to admire overmuch, when I assure thee,
that my morning ablutions were no less refreshing
than usual, albeit they were performed from a

18 REJECTED AHTICLES.

pie-dish in place of that hemispherical receptacle
which we employ for that purpose ; that my tea
tasted not the less fragrant for being sipped from
a cup that a bee might have mistaken for a tulip ;
and that I did not fancy myself in worse than my
ordinary health when I felt myself in better,
merely because my braekfast was brought to me
in my bed-room.

In truth, whether that the sea air of yesterday
has braced up the bands of my spirits, or that
the entire novelty of the scene which I find before
my eyes on waking this morning has loosened
and set them vibrating, (for I give thee thy
choice, reader, between the material and the
moral theory), certain it is, that they are in better
than their usual trim. And as I have often given
thee the proceeds of their peevishness and want
of self-controul, it is but fair that thou shouldst
have thy share in their more " blest condition."

But look not for any regular narrative from me.
A series of events, even when, as my friend W.
hath it, they are " linked each to each by natural
piety," is what I am altogether incapable of fol-
lowing, even in idea. My intellectuals have, at
some period or other of their existence — whether
before they appertained to me, the man Elia, or

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 19

since, I guess not — undergone a sort of disj oint-
ment or dislocation, which has shut up some of
those alleys or avenues by which the several apart-
ments communicate^ with each other and formed
a suite. And the consequence is, that though
each room may be as well adapted to its ap-
pointed use as another's, and may be as fitly fur-
nished, (though I say not that they be so), yet
many of them can only be come at by out-of-the-
way means — such as climbing in at the window, or
dropping down the chimney.

Touching the sky of France, and the atmos-
phere that fills its blue breadth, I like them well,
as a change. They seem to breathe into me a
buoyancy, (why not write it 6oyancy ?) that I
have not lately felt, (I confess it), even in the
greenest of the green places that neighbour my
suburban home ; or in the pleasant fields of Hert-
fordshire, or of more distant Devon. It is as if
they were impregned with a vinous spirit, drawn
forth by the glances of that " hot amorist/' the
Sun, from the innumerous vine-clad vallies on
which helooks in his lightsome course. In England
the open air, when it is open, never fails to still
that restless stir " which hangs upon the beatings
of the heart." It hushes it, as a nursing-mother

c2

20 REJECTED ARTICLES.

hushes her infant, " while pap content is making."
(I speak of it at its best.) We can fall asleep
in its arms ; or fancy that we are sleeping — which
is better. It is lulling sweet, and soft ; balmy, as
if distilled from the breath of flowers. It is
dream-compelling — the mother of sweet medi-
tations. When all wrapt about by it like a soft
garment, we feel that

" If it were now to die, 't were now to be most happy :"

so full and sure is the bliss — so quiet, yet so con-
summate. But here — hey for old Ben's " New
Inn, or the light of heart !" No dreaming here
— no meditations — no mild melancholy — no plea-
sant despondencies. And as for dying, it is a
thing clean out of the question. It cannot be.
Death himself seems dead and gone. He could
not live upon such life-creating food. He is
fairly starved out. Or if he comes at all, it
must be " like a thief in the night." There can
be no such thing as dying in the day-time, here.

I never could make out what it was which
created that anomaly in morals and manners, the
French character. But I have tasted their air,
and my difficulties have melted away into it.
I am a Frenchman myself! I go about on the

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 21

tips of my toes ; and move my arms from my
sides " with an air ;" and hum snatches of old
French tunes ; and step aside when I meet the
blooming peasant women in the market-place, —
gracefully bowing the head of my imagination as
they pass, and scattering flowers (of fancy) in
their path. I must return incontinently ; or there
will be two Elias — which were too many ; and
yet not one — which were too few.

Let me, however, set down a few notes, as me-
morials of the danger I have run, of losing my
identity, and becoming " sophisticated." And
first, let me do justice to M. Dessin's Hotel. It is
an Inn for the Titans to have stopped at. Its court-
yard is like one of the great Quadrangles at Oxford,
in all but the stillness and the green. It is, to
other inns, what the India-house is to other count-
ing-houses. It seems built in mockery of us
puny moderns ; and it were idle to inquire if it is
ever full, — for if every room were occupied it
would still be empty. — Sallying forth from its
great gateway into the street, (of which a tenth part
of the Hotel forms half,) you feel " cabinned,
cribbed, confined," — as when passing out of Lin-
coln's-inn-fields into Turnstile. If M. Dessin
could be prevailed on to build a Church in the
centre of the court-yard, and turn one of the

•22 il EJECTED ARTICLES.

rooms into a Theatre, it would be a complete

thing.

THE MARKET-PLACE.

It is Saturday, and Market-day ; and if, reader,
thou art not susceptible of Market-day in a great
country-town, thou art" not for Elia's money ; or
rather he is not for thine. It is among the
prettiest sights in nature : in the nature of art, I
mean. Such nut-brown faces, with the red bloom
breaking through them ! Such teeth, shining
forth through such lips ! Such clean clothes, and

such fly caps ! I have not, like de Q , been

a great frequenter of markets — especially London
ones, at night. But of all the markets that I
have seen, commend me to this one of Calais. If
all England can shew a dozen such sights, once a
week throughout the year, it is a better place
than I think it — which is much. And if every
great town in France can shew such a one, it is a
better place than anybody thinks it — which is
much more.

In passing from the Port last night, in custody
of the commissioner (so the little ragged rogue
calls himself) whose, will, or rather whose shall

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 23

it was that I should go to Mister Dessiii's hotel
in particular, I observed that we traversed a
great open Square, shut in by high houses on
every side, and empty of every living and dead
thing — except the moon-light — which is neither.
To-day that Square is one unbroken mass of
moving life and beauty, and of that without which
they are not worth having. I never saw anything
so brilliant ; — not even the Dutch pictures of simi-
lar scenes. Indeed, I never greatly affected pic-
tures of this kind of scene. In a picture they
can neither be idealized nor realized : and the
merit of pictures consists in their doing either
one or other of these, in regard to the scene or
object they profess to represent. The old Italians
often did the first, and the old Flemings the se-
cond ; and the moderns do neither. But this
Market is a better thing, in its way, than any of
them ever did. Come with me into it, reader,
and let us see of what it consists.

On first entering it, from the street where I so-
journ, (yclept " Royal," on account, I suppose,
of its containing the Prince of Hotels), it looks,
to a general glance over it, something like what
the great Tulip bed, in Mr. Smith's Nursery at
Dalston, must appear to the " microscopic eye"
of a fly — so intermingled are the colours of the

24 REJECTED ARTICLES.

peasant's dresses, so various, so bright, so un-
broken, and so ever-shifting about as the breeze
of busy traffic passes over it. It is less dense
and less lively than elsewhere, here, where we are
entering ; because here, you see, the grain is ex-
posed ; which asks for room, and does not go off
so quickly as the more ready edibles. What a fine
patriarchal look dwells in the sun-burnt cheeks
and snow-white forehead of that old peasant, who
stands erect behind his open-mouthed sack, wait-
ing his turn for a customer ; for there is no noisy
rivalry here — no bullying or cajoling you into
buying, whether you will or not. Those younger
ones, too, that stand beside and about him, each
behind his sack ; what noble heads some of them
have ! They might have been bred up with
Guiderius and Arviragus. Nay, you might select
enough from among them to stand for a Cartoon
of Joseph and his brethren — each with his sack.

Turning to the right, here, on this raised spot
in front of the handsome old Town-hall, are spread
out the few varieties of country crockery-ware
which these primitive people need for their simple
purposes; but on which the bronze busts of Guise
and Richelieu seem to look down with infinite
contempt. You may save yourself the trouble of
telling that aged crone, there, who sits in the

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. '^O

little watch-box, waiting to sell them, that there
is not one object among them all of which the use
could be conjectured in any state of society ap-
proaching to civilization ; for if you do she will
only return you a faint smile, of which both you
and she would be equally puzzled to make out the
meaning.

But pass we on towards the heart of the busy
scene. In the midst of all, and almost from end
to end of the Square, stands a row of as fine
specimens of the human animal as eye ever looked
upon. Flesh and blood can go no farther than
this. Set it down in thy tablets, reader, that
these are your only symptoms of health and con-
tent. Whatever looks different from this, is not
as it should be, however taking it may be to our
effeminate tastes, and vulgarly refined asso-
ciations.

I never saw any thing like these people before.
And yet the instant I look at them the truth
comes upon me as if by instinct. This is the
real thing. All else is sophisticate. Such clear
and spacious brows — such brilliant yet innocent
eyes — such apple cheeks, as hard, as red, and as
round — such mouths, made up of the good tem-
per which grows out of content — such ripe, un re-
luctant lips — such unconscious teeth — and withal,

26 tt EJECT*: I) ARTICLES.

such an air of happy independence, overflowing
every now and then into sparkling streams of
mirth ; — all this, I freely confess to thee, reader, I
never witnessed before. I do not know how it
may be with thee ; but for me, it has filled me
with a serious joy, interfused with a still more
serious melancholy and misgiving, which I do not
very well know how to entertain. We, in England,
cannot shew such a sight as this for our lives.
And if a state like this of France can shew it, at
a stone's throw from our shores, and after all that
she has suffered and performed, there must be
" something rotten" in — but hold, hold, my gentle
friend, Elia ! if thou lovest me (or thyself) hold !
Let thy wild fancy intermeddle as it will with all
things else ; but let it leave Politics to patriots,
parrots, and popular preachers. Shun it as thou
vvouldst a pestilence. Knowest thou not the
wreck and ruin it has wrought among thy dearest
friends ? Has it not made * * * * * but let us
have done with it.

These beautiful realities, from which we for a
moment turned away so idly, are butter-women.
Each is standing (not sitting) behind a milk-white
wooden receptacle, over which she bends grace-
fully, with a hand on each knee, . and the cover
of which she lifts up on the approach of a cus-

AM UM-SENTTMENTAL JOURNEY 27

tomer, and discloses her little store. It may be
worth, perhaps, altogether — including the basket
of eggs which always accompanies it — as much
as we (erewhile) clerks used to give for our daily
mutton chop and pint of wine, at a paltry tavern
in the city. And yet she who owns it reckons
the mere profit on it — which she has already
realized in imagination — a little possession. And
that she gets more than " a living" upon the in-
terchange of it, is evident from the tasty trim-
iiess of her attire, its delicate cleanness and pro-
priety, and above all from those great yellow gold
ear-ornaments (" tops and drops/7 I remember we
used to call them, when they were in vogue among
us) that hang down from her ears to her very
shoulders, where they rest. Her attire is fashioned
as follows : and it differs from all her tribe only
in the relative arrangement of its colours. On
the body a crimson jacket, of a thick, solid tex-
ture, and tight to the shape ; but without any
pretence at ornament. This is met at the waist
(which is neither long, nor short, but exactly
where nature placed it) by a dark blue petticoat,
of a still thicker texture, so that it hangs in large
plaits where it is gathered in behind. Over this,
in front, is tied tightly round the waist, so as to
keep all trim and compact, a dark apron, the

28 REJECTED ARTICLES.

string of which passes over the little fulled skirt
of the jacket behind, and makes it stick out
smartly and tastily, while it clips the waist in.
The head-gear consists of a sort of mob cap,
nothing of which but the edge round the face can
be seen, on account of the kerchief (of flowered
cotton) which is passed over it, hood fashion, and
half tied under the chin. This head-kerchief is
in place of the bonnet — a thing not to be seen
among the whole five hundred females who make
up this pleasant show. Indeed, varying the
colours of the different articles, this description
applies to every dress of the whole assembly ; ex-
cept that in some the fineness of the day has dis-
pensed with the kerchief, and left the snow-white
cap exposed ; and in others, the whole figure (ex-
cept the head) is coyishly covered and concealed
by a large hooded cloak of black cloth, daintily
lined with silk, and confined close up to the
throat by an embossed silver clasp, but hanging
loosely down to the heels, in thick, full folds.
The petticoat is very short ; the trim ancles are
cased in close-fit hose of dark, sober, slate colour ;
and the shoes, though thick and serviceable like
all the rest of the costume, fit the foot as neatly
as those which are not made to walk in.

I declare these picturesque people (the epithet

AN UN-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 29

belongs to them more than to any I ever saw, for
they look as if they had just walked out of pic-
tures) have made quite a delineator of me. I
never was so descriptive before. How sayest
thou, reader? This is the age of authors who
write with the pencil instead of the pen. Shall I
enlist myself among the number, and issue pro-
posals for publishing by subscription a set (of all
things in the world) of " French Scenes and Cos-
tumes ?" I, who do not pretend even to see,
much less to make others see, any thing more
of human life, and its results, than those little
obliquities and excrescencies which start out from
the strait line and 'dead level of it, and are over-
looked by its other spectators? To me, those per-
sons and things which are like other persons and
things, are like nothing — or they are nothing, for
I do not observe them long enough to see them.
They slip off my sensorium without making any
impression upon it.

No ; I may, perhaps have given, above, an in-
telligible account of a common thing ; because to
me it was not common, and because, moreover, there
is something in it which, if I mistake not, is es-
sentially characteristic and peculiar. But I must
stop in time, or I shall put in jeopardy any little
credit I may have gained for seeing what others

30 R F. .) F. C T F, T) A Tt T I C I. K S .

do not, by putting down as strange and worthy
of record what every body else regards in the
light of a level common-place. I will therefore
leave thee, reader, (and thou canst scarcely be on
a spot better adapted to provide thee with a few
hours, of innocent delectation), in the midst of the
grand Place of Calais, on the Market-day of the
first Saturday in September, eighteen hundred and
twenty -five ; — assuring thee, in all sincerity, that
if thou lookest about thee with an observant eye,
and a mind made soft by sympathy with the
crowd of happy humans that surround thee, thou
shalt carry away a throng of impressions that will
stand thee in better stead, in thy passage through
this valley of (not " the shadow of death," but)
the sunshine of life, than will, though he should
write till doomsday, all the crude thoughts, and
dreamy fancies, and wild imaginations, and super-
subtle distinctions — all the false truths, and the
true falsehoods of thy sincere well-wisher,

EI.IA.

RICH AND POOR.

A LETTER FROM WILLIAM COBTJETT TO THE PLOI'GHBOYS AND
LABOURERS OF HAMPSHIRE.

RICH AND POOR.

A LETTER FROM WILLIAM COBBETT TO THE PLOUGHBOYS AND
LABOURERS OF HAMPSHIRE.

MY HONEST FRIENDS AND FELLOW COUNTRYMEN,

1. I HAPPENED to be down in your parts the
other day, about a little Turnpike business —
(perhaps you've heard of the pretty game I've been
playing up lately, among the rascally Jews who
have got all the London Turnpike Trusts into their
hands, and are filling their own pockets by pick-
ing those of other people) — I say, happening to
be down in the neighbourhood of Botley, I took a
little pains to find out whether you are as well
off now as when I was living among you ; and
I was sorry to hear sad- complaints about you
from some of my old farming friends.

2. Times are a little changed with the land-
lords and the farmers since then, to be sure —

D

34 11 H J K C T E D A R T S C L E S .

thanks to the Paper Money and the Corn Bill ;
as I told them over and over again it would be.
And when times change for the worse with them,
they are not very likely to 'change for the better
with you. When the head and body are cold,
the hands and feet are seldom very warm. It is
as I said it would be, years ago. There is'nt
work for half of you ; and those that there is
work for don't get half paid ; and the old ones
among you are obliged to take up with the work-
house; and the young ones to break stones to
mend the roads, that the rich parsons and par-
liament-men may roll along smoothly, as they
loll their lazy carcases back in their fine carriages
— one of which, by the bye, and the cost of its
keep, would provide twenty of you and your
families with wholesome food, warm clothing,
and a nice little snug cottage over your heads,
for twenty years to come !

3. I hear too that some of you have actually
the audacity (so the said parsons and parlia-
ment-men think and call it) not to be content
with this amusing occupation of everlasting
stone cracking; or- even to be quite satisfied
with holding the plough from morning till night
for ten pence a-day ; and have been trying to
better yourselves by making your way up to

1UCH AND POOR. 35

town to get places. Now this information, my
good lads, is what has tempted me to put aside
many other important matters that I had in hand,
and address you the present letter.

4. And so, because matters are going a little
hard with you, and your accustomed labour will
not procure all that you would like to have, (and
that, I admit, you ought to have,) you are get-
ting tired of your present condition, and hanker-
ing after others that you ought to be proud of
knowing nothing about. Because ploughboys
and labourers don't get quite so much as they
used to do, and as you hear is to be got by other
occupations, you begin to think that ploughing
and labouring are not the best kinds of work for
those whose lot it is to work for their bread.

5. But I should be glad to know how you
can change your condition for a better. What
occupation is more honourable than husbandry?
What is more manly, more healthful, more
pleasant ? I tell you what, my lads, I shrewdly
suspect that some of your rantipole Squires have
been filling their houses with visiters from London
for the sporting season, who have brought down
with them a pack of grooms, valets, lacqueys, and
other lazy hounds, and that these chaps have got
among you at the Alehouse, while their masters

3<> IIRJECTF.D AHT1CLF.S.

were getting drunk together at the Hall, and have
instilled some of their cursed notions into your
heads, about the pleasures of a London life, and
the delights of having large wages and little work,
and of being dizened out in flashy clothes, and
riding behind their masters, or perhaps sitting
cheek-by-jowl beside them, in some gimcrack
gingerbread gig, so that nobody but themselves
can tell which is which !

6. But do you pretend to have English blood
in your veins, and yet tell me that this is a life
fit for an Englishman 1 Would you, who rise
with the sun, and sally out into the sweet morn-
ing air, and having driven your team a- field,
seize the smooth-rubbed handle of your glitter-
ing plough, and whistle at your work till break-
fast time, while the blackbird is whistling back
to you from the copse, the lark singing merrily
in the sunshine above your head, and the whole-
some steam of the new-turned earth is risino*

e>

all about you, and mixing with the sweet breath
of the hawthorn ; would you, I say, who can
live such a life as this, and have lived it, change
it to be groom of the stable and hold the stirrup
to some lubberly lord, who is himself perhaps
groom of the bedchamber and holds (I won't say
what) to a king, who is himself lacquey to all of

HICH AND POOR. 37

us, for he receives our pay and wears our livery ?
Would you, who when your day's work is over,
are as much your own masters as any lord in the
land ; and more ; and are at no man's beck and
call ; (as no one who bears the name of man ought
to be ;) would you change your condition, to be-
come the servant of a servant's servant, and not
be able to call your soul your own ; merely because
you can get a few shillings in a year more wages
by it ? Would you, I say, do this ? Then shame
and short commons be your portion !

7. But no ; you would not do it. I know you
would not. I have not lived in the midst of you
all these years, and spent the greater part of them
in trying to cultivate a spirit of independence
among you, and all for nothing. You would not,
I'm sure you would not, be content to be slaves
to the rich, merely because you happen to be
what they (the rich) call poor.

8. But, my good lads, I'm almost afraid you
don't properly understand the meaning of those
words " Rich " and " Poor." And if you don't
I'll be sworn the parson of the parish won't teach
you. So I will. You must know, then, that the
London Press — you've heard of the Press, I sup-
pose ; the base, beggarly, lying Press ; the coward-
ly, skulking, scoundrel Press ; the Newspaper

3 8 I J K J K C T 12 D A R T I C L E S .

Press ; you've heard of this thing, by means of
which half a score cunning knaves contrive to
gull, hoodwink, and bamboozle half the nation,
(and would do the whole if it was not for me,)
and cram their pockets with pelf at the same time.
I wish I had time to put you up to a few of their
tricks. But I'll just give you a notion how some
of them are paid for what they do; and then you
may give a pretty good guess as to what it is
that they do, to get paid after that fashion. It
was but the other day that a fellow named Clement ;
a great fat bull-necked pot-bellied chap he is now :
but I knew him when he was so thin and half
starved that he could have crept in and out at a
rat-hole. Well ; this fellow set up a thing called
a "Sunday Paper;" in which he used to collect
together all the lies that had been hatched in the
course of the week, and add a lot more of his own
invention, and then persuade the people, by his
puffing advertisements, to buy all this trash, and
read it to one another of a Sunday, and fancy that
they were as much concerned in it as if it had
all been gospel.

9. Well ; this fellow, I say, after having
carried on a roaring trade in these lies for some
time, found the money tell in at such a rule, that
he bethought himself, if he could but contrive to

RICH AND POOR. 39

bring his pigs to market seven times a week in stead
of once, his profits would be seven times as
much as they were before : for he's one of 'those
people who have just sense enough to know that
seven is seven times as much as one. Accordingly,
the other day (that is a few months ago) another
newspaper chap of the name of Perry; a paltry,
pitiful fellow, who used to kick his heels in the
antichambers of lords and dukes, and was some-
times allowed to lick his fingers at the lower end
of their dinner tables, on condition of puffing their
parliament speeches next day ; this last chap,
I say, happened to die just pat, as if on pur-
pose, for the other (Clement) to pop into his
place.

10. But how was he to do this ? for places
that are worth having are not to be got by ask-
ing for. Ilow was he to get into this place ?
Why by cash to be sure. lie determined to
buy it. .Bui/ a newspaper ! A thing, the success
of which (putting merit and demerit out of the
question) depends entirely on the person who
conducts it ! and the person who had hitherto
conducted this was dead ! But no matter :
Clement determined to buy this place, left va-
cant by the death of Perry. (And what place,
by the bye, is not to be bought in London, if you

40 REJECTED ARTICLES.

know how to set about making the bargain ?)
In short, Clement bought this defunct daily paper,
called the Morning Chronicle ; for defunct it must
be when Perry was so ; since the Morning Chro-
nicle meant neither more nor less than a sheet of
paper, on which he (Perry) chose to print any-
thing that he had to say on any topic that might
be the talk of the hour. Clement bought it, how-
ever. And how much do you think he gave for
it ? for this is the point to which I wish to direct
your attention. How much do you think he paid
for it ?

11. Why " fools and their money are soon
parted; perhaps a matter of a hundred pounds;"
I hear some of you say. A hundred pounds !
What do you say to FORTY THOUSAND? FORTY
THOUSAND POUNDS!! ! — This is what Clement
paid, for the privilege of venting his lies six times
a-week oftener than he had hitherto done, under
the name of the Morning Chronicle. FORTY
THOUSAND POUNDS!!! Enough to keep you
and all your families from want, all through the
county, if you were never to do another day's
work while you live ! What do you say to this,
my honest friends.? — You see lying is the trade
to get rich by, after all. It is better than farm-
ing, even when wheat is 905. a quarter.

RICH AND POOR. 41

12. But I 'must get back to the subject on
which I began to address you. I was saying
that I 'in afraid you do not exactly see the true
difference between what are called the. Rich and
the Poor. And I don't know how you should,
when it has been, any time these thirty years, the
sole business of this base Press to throw dust
into your eyes to prevent you from seeing the truth,
and dirt at all those who, like me, are able and
willing to shew it you ?

13. Ask, for instance, the Times newspaper;
the hireling, hellish Times ; the bloody Old
Times ; who calls me " old Cobbett :" the brute
beast ! as if I was'nt young enough to be pretty
sure of living to see him and all his base crew
carted, and to spit upon their graves ! Ask, I
say, this infamous " Times » newspaper what's
the difference between a " rich " man and a
" poor " one, and the advantages or disadvantages
of each ; and it's ten to one but he tells you that
the chief difference consists in the one being able,
and the other not able, to buy his paper !

14. But the dolt forgets (or at least he would
have you forget ; for I'll take good care lie shall
never forget it) that there is such a writer as
William Cobbett in the world ; who glories, and
ever will, in telling the truth to those who cannot

42 REJECTED ARTICLES.

afford to purchase it, oven if there were any one
else to offer it them ; and who thus puts an end
to the distinction between " poor" and " rich,"
and places them both on a level in point of in-
tellect and knowledge ; which is the only real
riches. The pay that pleases me is the good Fm
doing. I don't deny that I like money well
enough ; especially when it comes out of the
pockets of those who have plundered it from
the people ; for I know what to do with it better
than they do : and what is more, I deserve it ;
which nobody will say of them. But of the
poor I scorn to take a penny beyond what is just
enough to pay me for the paper and print of what
I write for them. As for the writing itself, they
arc welcome to that. My Register is a nice little
book containing thirty-two pages ; not a great,
flapping, fly away thing, containing only four
pages ; like the offspring of the vagabond Press.
And yet the price of my THIRTY-TWO pages is
sixpence, and the price of their FOUR pages is
scvenpcnce ! !

15. Now mark me, my friends. All that I
desire is, that in London (the Metropolis^ as it
is nicknamed by scholars; the great WTEN, as/
call it, who, thank God ! am no scholar) all I
wish by way of remuneration for mi/ labours is,

K I C H A N D P O O R . 43

that all the mechanics and artizans in this WEN
would form themselves into little clubs or com-
panies, of either six or twelve, as their circum-
stances will permit, and each lay down his penny
or halfpenny (as the case may be) to buy my
Register, and read it in turn, or to one another ;
— that in every market town throughout the king-
dom of England, Scotland, and Ireland similar
clubs be formed, and also that every tap-room be
compelled (by its customers I mean) to take one
copy, in order to have it at hand to refer to in
case of need ; — and lastly, that every village and
hamlet in the United Kingdom be supplied with
one or more copies, according to its size ; the
said copies to be paid for in any manner most
convenient to the persons interested. The trifling
profit that would be derived from this, is all I
desire. As for the parlour people ; the parsons,
the squires, and all their gang ; they may read the
Register, or not, just as they please.

16. But to the point, as to who is " Rich,"
and who " Poor," in the real practical meaning
of these words. My Lord Lackwit, who lives at
the great " Place," as they call it; (I need not
point him out more particularly, for you know
who I mean, well enough) ; this " Lord" has an
income of forty thousand pounds a year ; or three

44 REJECTED ARTICLES.

thousand three hundred and thirty-three pounds
a month ; or eight hundred pounds a week ; or
a hundred and ten pounds a day ! ! This is, in
round numbers, the amount of his income ; of the
money that he has to spend every day in his life
throughout the year. There are several of these
" Lords," elsewhere, who have twice or three times
as much as this. But we will take him as an
example, because you know something of him, and
will therefore know whether what 1 shall have to
say about him is true or not.

17. This " Lord," then, has a sum of money
coming to him every day of his life, which amounts
to as much as would keep four of your families in
comfort for a whole year. Now, is this " Lord" a
" Rich" man, or a " Poor" one ? You laugh at
the question ; and so would he if it were put to
him. But if it were I who put it, and he had
sense enough to understand and feel the reply
which I should make to it, he would pretty soon
begin to laugh on the wrong side of his mouth.
But is he a " rich" man? I mean rich in point
of mere money ; for the riches of comfort and
content are not what we are now talking about.
We shall come to that afterwards. Is this Lord
" rich" in point of money ?

18. Let us see. But, in order that we mav

RICH AND POOR. 45

understand each other clearly, let us start on
this principle, that a man is " rich" or " poor,"
in proportion as he has much left, or less than
nothing, after providing himself and his family
with the necessaries of life.

19. In the first place this " Lord" has to provide
food, lodging, and clothes for a whole army of lazy
hounds, who stuff and gorge themselves all day
long, and half the night, and waste as much again
as they eat ; and to pay them once a quarter into
the bargain, for letting themselves live at his ex-
pense and do nothing ; pay them each as much
as one of you can earn by working hard from sun-
rise to sunset.

20. Mind, .he must do this. No matter what
his inclination or disposition may be, he must
keep up " a proper establishment." It is a
" necessary" of his life. He would no more dare
to do otherwise, than he would dare to let the
parliament-men who sit for his boroughs vote ac-
cording to their consciences. He is stingy enough
where he dares to be so, heaven knows ! and so
do you know too, I dare say, if you have ever
had to go into his servants' hall. I'll answer for
it, all the strong ale you ever got there would
have gone into a nutshell, without drowning the
maggot that lodged in it. And if the beggar never

4(j It EJECT ED ARTICLES.

goes away empty handed from his door, it is
because he takes good care none shall ever get
near it. And yet he must support this army of
menials, because he would not be " a Lord" with-
out them. It is they that make him " a noble-
man," by calling him one. If it were not for
them, neither he nor any one else would know
that he was one.

21. A " noble man," if it means any thing,
means something that is better than its, who
arc of the common run of men. And is he
this in himself? Look at his poor crazy carcass,
as it lolls back in its easy carriage to take the
air ; and then tell me — Is there anv thing in
that, better than there is in yours, or in mine?
Does it look better ? Can it act better ? Can he
who owns it think better than we can, or talk
better? Is he more healthful, more honest, more
happy? What can he do (of himself I mean)
that you or I cannot do as well, if not ten times
better ? In short, in what respect is he more of
A MAN than we arc? In what does he better,
or a tenth part so well, fulfil the objects of our
common existence ?

22. " But look at his houses — his carriages
— his horses — his servants — his liveries" — you say.
Ay, there it is. In these he is a " Lor ! ;" and

11 1C II AND POOR. ' 47

consequently it is these that make him a Lord ;
and without these he is none. These, therefore,
he must have, if they cost him half his income.
They are the " necessaries of life" of " a Lord."

22. In the next place, he must keep a pack of
hounds and a stable of hunters ; though he does
not know a beagle from a bull-dog, or a fox from
a ferret, and is as little at home in his seat in the
saddle as he is in his seat in the House. He
must do this. What would you say of him if he
were to sell his dogs, and turn off his huntsmen,
and put his hunters into harness ? What would
his friends say of him, who are kind enough
to come down from London every sporting season,
to ride those horses and follow those dogs, and
live through half the winter at his expense, to
save living at their own ? What would his ser-
vants and country neighbours, the " gentry," and
substantial farmers (if there be any left) say of
him ? What would he say and think and feel of
himself? Why that he was no longer " a Lord,"
to be sure ; no longer what his ancestors were
before him, and what they made and left him.
He must do it. He has no choice.

23! Then this " Lord" has a " Lady ;" and the
" Ladies" of " Lords," as every body knows, are
not the persons to decrease their expenses ; for

48 REJECTED ARTICLES.

if they bring them much, they ta.ke good care
to spend them more. I believe, for my own part,
that this particular " Lord" of whom we are
speaking, would be glad enough to pass the rest
of his days quietly in the country ; for he has
just sense enough to know that the racketings and
junketings of a London life have already left him
with " one foot in the grave ;" and he has too
lordly a fear of death to be in any hurry to help the
other there. But the " Ladies" of Lords (espe-
cially when they are getting old) are not to be in-
fluenced by any fear of this sort. To do them j ustice,
they will have their swing, if they die for it,
and even while they are dying for it. So long
as they can keep out of their coffins, they will
not keep out of their card-rooms, and ball-rooms.
And card-rooms and ball-rooms abroad beget
card -rooms and ball-rooms at home. And for
this there must be a home. And the " Home" of
the " Lady" of a great " Lord " means something
rather different from what you and I understand
by the word. In short (for we have no time to
dwell upon it) it means much the same as the
" Home" of the " Lord" himself means in the
country ; a place as big as a barrack ; plastered
over from top to bottom with paint and gilding ;
and beset at every step by another army of locusts,

RICH AND POOR. 49

in the shape of lacqueys, valets, butlers, footmen,
coachmen, stablemen, housekeepers, lady's maids,
housemaids, kitchen-maids, laundry-maids, and
the Lord knows how many more besides : (not the
" lord " of the house, by the bye ; for I'll be
sworn he knows no more about the matter than
if he had nothing to do with it. If he has been
withinside half the rooms in his own house,
and knows the name of a fourth part of his ser-
vants, it is as much as he does !)

24. This, then, is another " establishment"
that is as much a " necessary of life" to a great
" Lord/' as bread and meat are to you and I. And
the few " necessaries" that we have already seen
go to the preserving of this " Lord's" life, must
have swallowed up a pretty good slice of his in-
come. But we have not seen half of them yet.
You must know (for I'm sure you don't know it
yet) that " people of fashion" — (and a " Lord " is
always a person of fashion, by birth ; though in
point of manners and habits he may be more vulgar
than the boor that blacks his shoes) ; I say,
" people of fashion" have decided among them-
selves, that it is altogether inconsistent with reason
and common-sense, that they should live either
in London or in the country, for more than about
two-thirds of the year, " But if they live neither

50 REJECTED ARTICLES.

in London nor in the country, where are they to
live?" you very naturally inquire. Ay; that's
the question ; and a pretty puzzling question it
is to them. Quite as much so as it is to you.
But I'll tell you how they manage.

25. This habit, of not being able to live at
home during a certain portion of the year, has
long been prevalent among them ; and they have
at last contrived (or at least those who gain a
base livelihood by administering to their idle,
senseless, and unnatural wants have contrived for
them) to establish certain spots, at a greater or less
distance from the WEN, and chiefly on the sea-
coast, but so situated in regard to soil, aspect,
&c. that nothing in the shape of vegetation will
flourish near them. Now, where there is no ve-
getation there can evidently be no " Country."
Consequently these places (" watering-places"
they call them) bear no resemblance whatever to
either London or the Country, and are therefore
chosen as the residences of " people of fashion,"
during about a third part of every year.

26. But they do not build houses at these
places. They hire them ; hire them at an enor-
mous expense, more than proportioned to that
of their own houses ; while their own houses, and
all the " establishments" belonging to them, (or

RICH AND POOR. 5|

nearly all), are going on just the same as if they
themselves were there. Add to all this the ex-
penses of getting backwards and forwards from
these " watering-places," (which are the more
fashionable the more expensive they are to reach)
and we shall have got at another pretty hungry
outlet for our " Lord's" income.

27. I fancy, if we calculate a little, we shall
find that the forty thousand a year looks rather
foolish by the time all these calls upon it have
been answered. In fact, need I go any farther
in my enumeration of the " necessaries" of a
" Lord's" life? I think not. There are many
" Lords" who cannot contrive to get these few
" necessaries of life" which I have already named,
with double the income of our lord. Not that they
are therefore content to do without them. No
— no — they continue to get them easily enough ;
but not with their income ; not by paying for
them honestly and fairly, as you and I are obliged
to pay for whatever we get. They get them, it
is true ; but they get them " by hook and by crook/*
as the phrase goes ; by means of a herd of rascally
stewards, and attorneys, and money-lenders, and
Jews ; by mortgages, and postobits, and policies
of insurance, and the devil of usury knows what

F. 2

52 REJECTED ARTICLES.

besides ; and by involving in comparative ruin
those who are to come after them, and who ought
by rights to receive the family estate bettered in-
stead of beggared ; and who do so receive it in
every case where the holder is an honest man.

28. Mind, I am not complaining of, or lament-
ing, this mode by which lords and people of fashion
" raise money," as they call it. I should as soon
think of interfering, or feeling sorry, if I saw one
thief trying to pick another's pocket in the streets
of London. I am not complaining of it ; I am
only telling you that so it is; that this is what
many " Lords" are forced to do in order to keep
up those " establishments" which are necessary
to their existence ; and that among others my Lord
Lackwit is forced to do it. And the conse-
quence is that he does not enjoy a moment's
real peace of his lordly life, and that he cannot
honestly call the coat he wears his own.

29. And now comes the question with which
we began our inquiry about him. Is he a
" RICH" man? Is this " Lord" — with his forty
thousand pounds a year, or three thousand three
hundred pounds a month, or eight hundred pounds
a week, or one hundred and ten pounds a day —
is he a " rich" man ? Rich even in the mere

RICH AND POOR. 53

money of which alone we are now speaking? I
will not insult your understandings by answering
the question.

30. Now let us give a look back at the other
part of the inquiry, as to who is properly to be
called a " poor" man ; still confining the ques-
tion to money alone, and still keeping in mind
the principle on which we set out, that a man
is " rich," or " poor," in proportion as he has
much, or less than nothing, left, after having sup-
plied himself and his family with what are, to
them, " the necessaries of life "

31. When I lived at Botley, there was (and I
hope still is) an honest labourer, named Will
Grange, who rented the little cottage at the corner
of the lane as you turn down to the Holt. Every
body at Botley knew Will Grange. He used to
work for me ; and I was proud to see him in my
fields. He was a credit to any master: if indeed
it is not a piece of impudent presumption for any
man to call himself the " master" of another,
merely because that other chooses, of his own
free will, to do certain things, for a certain price
which is fixed upon beforehand. If a labourer, of
no matter what description, does the work for me
that I require and engage him to do, and that
he agrees to do, I must pay him the price of his

54 REJECTED ARTICLES.

labour. I have no choice in the matter. 1 must
do it, ; for if I refuse to do it by fair means, he
can make me do it. Thank heaven, we have still
so much of justice left in our debased and degraded
country. When he has done his day's work he
can make me pay him the price of it, and need
never do another for me while he lives, unless he
likes. What impudence, then, for me to call
myself the master of this man ! And what abject
baseness in him, to call and to consider himself
as my slave! For the word " master" is without
a meaning, except when coupled Nwith that other
word, " slave."

32. But to return to honest Will Grange, who,
if I remember rightly, never called any man
" master"; though he was as far from fancying
himself above his station as he was from feeling
himself below it. Will Grange, when I knew him,
was a labourer ; a day labourer. I need not tell
you that this means, one who earns his livelihood,
day by day, by the sweat of his brow. He had
been this all his life ; and at the time I am speak-
ing of he had been this long enough to have
enabled him to get together just enough to pur-
chase a cow and the furniture of the cottage in
which he lived. He had, when I last saw him, a
wife and four children.

RICH AND POOR. 55

33. Now what would my Lord Lack wit, or
any other "Lord," or any of the herds of " nobility
and gentry," as they call themselves, who live
upon the plunder that comes out of the pockets
of the oppressed people of this degraded country ;
what would any of these " gentry" say, if you
were to ask them seriously whether a man like
Will Grange, a day labourer, with a wife and four
children to support out of the earnings of that
labour, is a " poor" man or a " rich" one ? What
would they say ? Why they would say nothing ;
but they would first laugh in your face, and then
turn away their heads in token of their contempt
for the person who could ask them such a silly
question. And they would do just the same if
you were to ask them whether my Lord Lackwit
is a " rich" man.

34. But does this make or prove the Lord to
be in reality "-rich" and the labourer " poor?"
Heaven forbid ! If any thing that they could
either think or say could alter the condition of
their " inferiors," (as they are pleased to term us
who do something for our bread,) we should all
of us be rather worse off than we are at present :
which, heaven knows, need not be. But is Will
Grange a " poor" man? for I will suppose that

50 REJECTED ARTICLES.

he still is what he was when I knew him. Let
us see.

35. I have said that he lives in a snug little
cottage, large enough to afford a warm shelter
to all his family in the winter weather : in the
summer they want none. I have said also that
he has a cow. This he keeps, partly by letting
the youngest of his little ones lead it in a string
about the green lanes ; (for there is no common
in his neighbourhood); but chiefly by the pro-
duce of the forty rods, or thereabouts, of garden
ground which is attached to his cottage. This
ground he cultivates entirely with a view to the
keep of his cow ; because he has the good sense
to know, that by so doing he contributes more
towards the health and comfort of his wife and
children, than if he could fill it ten times over
with potatoes and " garden stuff."

36. The cabbages and turnips that will grow
in this forty rods of land feed his cow well and
plentifully during the whole winter, and all that
part of the summer when she cannot pick up
her living in the lanes and by the road side.
And while she is well fed his children never want
a bowl of good wholesome skimmed milk ; and
his wife can make as much butter with the cream

RICH AND POOK. 57

that comes from it, as will give an increase to their
weekly earnings, at least equal to what two addi-
tional days' work in the week would do.

37. He is able to cultivate this bit of ground
easily, by taking an hour now and then before
and after his ordinary day's work, and by the
assistance of his eldest boy; to say nothing of
his having all Sunday to himself: and theirs
must be an odd kind of religion who would ob-
ject to his employing a portion of that day,
" holy" as it is, to such an end : for what work
can be holier, I should be glad to know, than
that which contributes to the health and comfort
of the offspring which God has given him ?

38. This cow, which, observe, is almost entirely
kept by the labour of honest Will, and which
must therefore be looked upon in the light of the
actual consequence of that labour, is the only
direct source of profit which he possesses, exclu-
sive of his own daily earnings. So that he is not
to be considered as any other than an ordinary day
labourer. Mind this ; because it is of consequence
to my argument that you should not regard Will
Grange, my example in this case, as any other
than a common labourer, like one of yourselves.

39. But Will has a wife ; a good, honest,
comely, industrious, neat-handed wife. And in

58 REJECTED ARTICLES.

no station of life, and least of all in yours, can
a man be all that he may be in that station, with-
out such a wife; any more than he can be it with
one of an opposite description ; with a slattern,
a scold, and a gossip : for these precious quali-
ties always go together.

40. Now Will's wife, as every good wife ought,
(I had almost said as every good wife does ; but
I'm afraid this would be going a little too far,
considering that not more than about sixty thou-
sand copies of my Cottage Economy have as yet
been circulated), I say that Will's wife hates and
abhors all manner of slops and messes about the
cottage ; and most of all she hates that worst, be-
cause most mischievous of all messes, tea.

41. As for the children, they do not know the
taste of beer, much less of any thing stronger.
And what little of it Will himself may stand in
need of, to enable him to get through his daily
labour more cheerfully, they can afford to buy :
that is if they can buy such a thing as beer at all
now-a-days, or get it any way without making it
themselves. I'm afraid that, at the time we are
speaking of, this excellent custom of brewing at
home ; this custom so indispensable to the English
cottager's enjoying the greatest share of health
and comfort of which his station is susceptible;

RICH AND POOR. 59

was almost necessarily laid aside, in consequence
of the monstrous weight of taxes which had been
laid on all the materials of brewing ; and which
custom, by the bye, I do not despair of seeing
almost universally revived at no very distant
day, when the cottagers shall have read and con-
sidered what I have written for them, on this most
important subject, in my Cottage Economy. But
we will suppose that Will Grange did not, be-
cause under the then circumstances of the times
he could not, brew their own beer. All that they
needed they could well afford to buy, out of the
earnings of their cow.

42. Then for bread, that of course Will's wife
baked herself. If she had not, I should never
have called her an " industrious" wife; no, not
even an " honest" one ; for a cottager's wife who
chooses to feed her children upon the pernicious
trash that she gets at the bakers for about half
as much again as she can make good wholesome
bread herself, has no more claim to be called
" honest," than any one has who defrauds others
of what is their due. The married labourer's earn-
ings are in part the due of his children ; for if
it were not for them he would not take the trouble
of earning so much as he does. That mother,
then, who squanders away those earnings unne-

GO REJECTED ARTICLES.

cessarily (to say nothing of mischievously) robs
her children of their due. This is what Will's
wife never did, or I should not now be offering
him and his family as an example to illustrate
the point of inquiry that we are presently coming
to.

43. I must not dwell much longer on the de-
tails connected with this point ; and I need not.
It is sufficient to say that the inmates of Will
Grange's cottage have seldom occasion to go else-
where in search of any thing that they may
want to make their lives easy, and even cheerful
and happy. They have a few pigs of course ;
which, with good management, not only give
them bacon for every alternate day throughout
the year, but, together with the cow, afford them
plenty of manure for their little garden ; with-
out an ample supply of which they could not
get from it what I have said that they do get,
namely, food for the cow during nine months
out of the twelve. They have also half a dozen
laying hens, which always afford them a hot din-
ner, when the cupboard happens to run bare.
And they have a couple of hives of bees, which
give them honey enough for the younger children
always to have a scrape of it upon their hunch of
bread, before they go to bed.

RICH AND POOR. 61

44. This is all that Will Grange and his
family have within themselves, to be sure. But
then what an " ALL" it is ! I should like to see
the " LORD" who is half so independent of the
rest of the world, as this honest labourer, and
his industrious, healthy, and happy family ; who
may almost be considered as the creators of all that
is necessary to supply their daily wants, and who
have nearly the whole of their earnings left, to buy
themselves and their children decent and com-
fortable clothing, and to lay by for a rainy day.

45. It is true that, after supplying themselves
with all the comforts which any of us require,
they have not enough left to pay for their children
going to school to the parson of the parish, to be
taught to spurn at their station, and be ashamed of
the father that fed, and the mother that bore them.
It is true they have not surplus enough to let them
sit at home idle half their time, and quarrel with
one another to make it pass away the more quick-
ly ; or- if they like that better, the husband to loll
at the alehouse and get drunk three days in the
week, while the wife leaves the children at home
to " mind" each other, and goes gadding about
through the village, tea-drinking, trolloping, and
tale-bearing.

46. It is true they have not enough to tempt

(J2 REJECTED ARTICLES.

them to do these things, and half a hundred
more, equally proper and praiseworthy, which a
superfluity might tempt even them to do, be-
cause it has before now tempted others, who,
without that temptation, would have been as
honest and as happy as they are. But, as we
have just seen, they have enough and to spare
for all the good purposes to which money can be
applied in their station of life ; a station which,
if it were what it might be from its nature, and
what it ought to be according to the claims of
natural justice, would be the envy of all other
stations, and the glory and delight of all who
belong to it.

47. And now our question returns : Is Will
Grange a " poor" man ? Again let me say, I will
not insult your understandings by answering this
question ; because I am sure that you have already
answered it for yourselves, and answered it in a
way that will I hope make it quite needless for
me to advise you to give up all those idle crotchets
that I hear you have got into your heads, about
leaving your beautiful, healthful, and sweet-scent-
ed fields, and coming up to " seek your fortunes"
in this detestable sink of all filth, folly, and
iniquity ; this standing and ever-increasing disease
of our country ; this WEN; this London. Shun

RICH AND POOR. 63

it, my honest friends, as you would shun a pest-
house, or a parish work-house. You may take
my word for it, that all the " fortune" you, with
your habits, could ever find in London, would be
poverty, contempt, and shame. By the bye, if you
knew what London is, I need not have named the
two last ; for there poverty means them both.

48. But even if you were sure of earning, by
coming here, three times as much as you can
by remaining where you are, you would be still
three times as badly off, because you would, in
a month from the time you set foot in this want-
creating city, have ten times as many to supply
as you now have, besides losing the power of
enjoying that supply even if you could get it.
No, no, my good friends ; stay where you are,
and be as contented as you can till better times
come. And come they must, one way or another ;
and that shortly. In the mean while you may
believe me when I tell you, that the only " rich"
man is he who is healthy, honest, and contented
with his lot ; (neither of which anybody is in
London) ; and that the only " poor" man is he
who has wants that he cannot supply.

So says your sincere friend
And well-wisher,

WILLIAM COBBETT.
Kensington, Sep. 1825.

TO-MORROW;

A GAIETY AND GRAVITY.

BY ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF " REJECTED ADDRESSES.

TO-MORROW;

A GAIETY AND GRAVITY.

BY ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF " REJECTED ADDRESSES.

" To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow."

MACBETH.

IT seems but yesterday that I took occasion to be-
stow a month's immortality upon " To-day ;" and
I propose not to let To-day pass without doing as
much for To-morrow. Perhaps I may devote To-
morrow to performing a similar office for Yesterday.
But this latter is more than I can promise, since it
is the very essence of To-morrow that no one can
tell what it will bring forth.

Of all the days in the year, there is none so
pregnant of wise determinations, flattering pro-
mises, sage resolutions, and salutary reforms, as
To-morrow. It is astonishing what projects are to
be commenced To-morrow ; and it is still more sur-

F 2

68 REJECTED ARTICLES.

prising what a number are to be brought to a con-
clusion on the same day !

Judging from the innumerable tradesmen's bills
that, are to be paid " To-morrow," one would sup-
pose that some new source of wealth had been simul-
taneously discovered by every small debtor through-
out the world of credit, and that to pay were as
easy and agreeable as to run in debt.

As for the intended " calls" of To-morrow, if
they should all be made they will all be to make
over again ; for every body will be out calling, on
every body. Then again, the " new leaves" that
are to be " turned over " To-morrow, are more
numerous than those " in Valombrosa's shade."

In short, To-morrow is to be the day more " big
with fate " than any that the sun ever shone upon ;
and more is to be done in the course of it than has
been done in any day since the world was made
out of chaos. And, " not to speak it profanely,"
even on that day there was but form and entity
given to what was before a confused mass of
matter ; whereas To-morrow, thoughts, intentions,
fancies, feelings, and imaginations, are to be me-
tamorphosed into actual and tangible facts ; and
what is more, a thousand events are to take place
that will never take place at all !

What a world would this be, if all were ac-

TO-MORROW. 69

complished in it that assuredly will be accom-
plished to-morrow ! To-morrow A. will ask a
friend to dine with him ; and B. will be as good
as his word ; and C. will commit no blunder ;
and D. will get a decision in the Court of Chan-
cery ; and E. will commence his new epic ; and
F. will finish his ; and G. will begin to grow wise ;
and H. will begin to grow honest ; and I. will be-
gin to leave off writing nonsense ; and K. will
keep himself sober ; and L. will not tell a single
lie; and M. will try to make himself agreeable ;
and N. will not ; and O. will get over his own
style; and P. will pay his long-standing tailor's
bill ; and Q. will quarrel with a taller man than
himself; and R. will begin to retrench his ex-
pences within his income ; and S. will say a good
thing ; and T. will tell one without spoiling
it ; and V. will vote in opposition to his interest ;
and U. will read this essay a second time ; and
W. will leave off wondering who wrote it ; and
X. Y. Z. will get a satisfactory answer to his ad-
vertisement for a wife.

And why is it that all these good things, and a
thousand more, which will certainly take place To-
morrow, never take place at all ? The secret is,
that To-morrow, like " good bye," is easily said,

70 REJECTED ARTICLES.

and that most of us are content to let our good
deeds appear under the guise of good words.

Besides which, though every body talks and
thinks of To-morrow as of a day that must come,
and though it is as familiar in our mouths " as
household words," yet we all feel that it is only
a word — that there is no such thing as To-morrow
— that it is a day which cannot happen — a dies
non. Who can explain what To-morrow is ? — or
where it is ? — or when it is? It is always coming,
like a waiter at an inn ; and yet it never comes.
The little boys at school understand it best. They
call it " To-morrow come-never."

And probably this, after all, is the point of
view in which most people secretly look at To-
morrow. And, accordingly, they are willing to
do anything in the world to oblige you — "To-
morrow." " To-day" they really must be excused
—they have so many things to attend to — but if

you will but call To-morrow . And then, when

you fancy that ' ' To-morrow" is come, and you take
them at their word—Oh, they really can't find
time To-day — but " To-morrow." And then when
that To-morrow comes — they are really very sorry
— but " circumstances have transpired," &c. And
thus it goes on for ever :

TO-MORROW. 7]

" To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time ;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

(and wise men too)
The way to " To-morrow !

An ancient philosopher has said, that he is wise
who has lived To-day. And it was wisely said.
And his commentator has added, no less wisely,
that he is wiser still who lived Yesterday. Let
me, who am albeit neither philosopher nor com-
mentator, not be accused of presumption, if I
complete the trinity of wise saying, by adding,
that he is wisest of the three who lives To-morrow ;
for To-morrow we may live as we please, whether
it comes to us or not.

In truth, we have hitherto been considering
this subject with a degree of flippancy which is
scarcely appropriate to it; for after all, what is
To-morrow but that great Future to which we all
look, and to which we are all hastening, on the
swift pinions of Time, and must inevitably reach,
even though we should succeed in trifling away
To-day as we did Yesterday, and To-morrow as we
have done To-day. The only truly wise man, is
he who so passes To-day, that To-morrow may be

72 REJECTED ARTICLES.

anticipated if it come not, and improved and en-
joyed if it come.

In the present frightfully artificial and diseased
state of society — with its ever-increasing cities,
and its ever more and more deserted and despised
fields, and groves, and solitudes ; — when all are
rushing towards the plague -tain ted spots, and
crowding into them as if they were tired of health,
and in love with disease and death ; — when govern-
ments are going about, under the guise of holi-
ness, seeking whom among the weak and dis-
united they may devour, and among the virtuous
divide and destroy ; — when rulers are raking in the
dirt of ages for pleas and precedents, whereby
they may debase the people they have been put
over, and lay t'heir liberty prostrate at the feet of
power ; — in short, when vice, luxury, and crime
(to say nothing of cant, cajolery, arid, cunning)
reign triumphant ; and virtue, wisdom, and na-
ture are laughed to scorn, and driven to seek
refuge in the solitudes of woods and deserts —
what should the truly wise man do, but live in
that only world which is left him unpolluted, and
of which he can make what use he pleases, by
fashioning it after any form that his fancy feels
inclined to — namely, the world of To-morrow — the

TO-MORROW. 73

great Future — "the all hailed hereafter?" Let
me ask those who doubt the wisdom of living
with a view to To-morrow rather than To-day, —
Of what avail were all the riches which Croesus
looked upon as the prime blessing of life — or the
honour which was so honoured by Periander of
Corinth — or the strength which Milo the Croto-
nian boasted of — or the knowledge which Socrates
worshipped — or the beauty which Orpheus adored
— or the ideal world of Plato — or the prudence
and forethought of Thales the Milesian — or even
the supreme virtue to which Aristotle referred all
happiness, and the happiness itself which Epi-
curus alone thought worth living for — what were
all these, unless with a view to To-morrow ?

Would any one consent even to live through
To-day, if he were sure that no To-morrow would
follow it ? Alas ! To-morrow is not a matter to
be trifled either with or upon. It is the . best part
of our existence ; since it is the only part of
which we can be sure that it will be what we
would have it be. Ophelia says that " we all
know what we are, but we know not what we
may be." But with all due deference to the
wisdom of her simplicity, she was wrong in both
clauses of her proposition. None of us know
what we are ; and we all know what we may be

74 REJECTED ARTICLES.

— To-morrow ; because To-morrow itself is but an
imagination ; and while we are imagining it, we
can just as well imagine ourselves into what we
please when it arrives. True, it arrives at last ;
and then we do not find either it or ourselves
what we intended or expected them to be.
But then it cannot be said that we have deceived
ourselves ; because we cannot find out our error
till to-day ; and then To-morrow is before us again,
as fresh and promising as ever.

In a word, those who would live to any good
end in the present unnatural and over-excited state
of society and manners, (to say nothing of the
corruption in morals and the degradation in poli-
tics), must make up their minds to forget Yes-
terday, and take no note of To-day, but live in the
future of To-morrow : for in the wise man's calen-
dar there are but these three days, which include
all time, past, present, and to come.

But can they so live ? Can the unavailing Yes-
terday be forgotten, and the imaginary To-morrow
be enjoyed, amidst the feverish turmoil and the
insane noise and distraction of To-day, as it exists
in the centre and heart of society and the world ?
Assuredly not. But " there is another and a
better world" — the world of woods, and fields,
arid gardens, and groves, and streams — each de-

TO-MORROW. 75

partment of which is a world of itself, and peopled
with beings who live only to be happy, and who
are happy only that they live. In that world the
soul may find rest for its wearied wings, and re-
freshment for its exhausted powers ; there it
may contemplate the future with a quiet and un-
disturbed gaze, till at last it sinks softly into it,
and becomes a part of what it looks upon.

There are many other points of view in which
To-morrow may be looked upon ; but I fear the
reader will be of opinion that I have said more
than enough of it for To-day. At any rate, I have
exhausted my limits, if not my subject; and the
remaining considerations touching To-morrow,must
be deferred till — To-morrow.

H.

DEMONIACALS

(POSTHUMOUS.)
BY CHILDE HAROLDR.

THE TOKEN.

To

LADY, forbear the fruitless strife !
Would 'st thou forget this solemn Token ?
It may not be ! this holds thy life
In bonds, that never can be broken.

This consummated the deep vow
Breathed at the marriage of our minds ;
And by its power I claim thee now : —
The silent spell thy spirit binds.

I claim THEE : — not thine outward beauty —
That lost for £ver its controul
When thy thoughts wandered from their duty :
But THEE — thy mind and heart and soul.

80 REJECTED ARTICLES.

How I once loved them ! Human love
Was never felt more deeply pure ;
But 'twas an effluence from above,
That could not — ought not to endure.

It was too spiritually bright
To mingle with a form of earth,
Even tho' that form of seeming light
Belied the dungeon of its birth,

And breathed of heaven. — One fatal hour
Hath changed all hours to come. Love's fled,
And with it love-born bliss : — the flower
Must wither when its root is dead.

But not the less I claim thy faith :
Unsought — unhoped for it was given :
Witness the listening earth beneath —
The watching stars — the breathing heaven.

That deep-vowed faith thou canst recall
Never ! — this simple ring of gold
To thee is magical — its thrall
Holds thee, and shall not cease to hold.

DEMONI ACALS. 81

Then struggle not — no force of thine
Can break the bond — no art can sever
Its links of adamant — thou'rt mine,
Absent or present — now — for ever !

REMONSTRANCE.

TO THE SAME.

PAUSE ! pause and listen ! Tis a voice
That was all music to thine ear ; —
Now hear its deep-breath 'd discords ! Pause-
Listen, and think, and fear !

Thy hopes stand trembling on the brink
Of a dark stream not to be cross'd ;
One plunge, and they for ever sink !
Turn back — or thou art lost.

Who hath done this? — With impious force
To tear the spirit from its shrine,

And call it marriage \ — 'Tis divorce !
Thy heart and soul are mine !

DEMONIACALS. OO

Need I recall that solemn hour ?
Alas ! it will not be forgot.
Twas brief and silent — but its power
Hath fix'd thy future lot.

Silent and brief — but its deep bliss,
Though fatal now, cannot decay :
The memory of that first — last kiss,
Shall never pass away.

Passion can work strange ends — a trance
Comes over me — it stills my pain.
What ! tears ! — ay — let them flow ! — perchance
You ne'er may smile again.

Passion can work strange ends : I hear
Accents, that seem to have their birth
In the deep prophetic heart. — Revere
Sounds that are not of earth !

" Dare not to struggle against fate !
" Or, with a guilty weakness, yield
" To bonds that shall lay desolate
" The path thy youth revealed !

84 REJECTED ARTICLES.

" Else shall the merry bridal bell
" Ring out a death-peal to thy joy ;
" And every hope that fatal knell
" Shall kill— but not destroy :

" Their ghosts shall linger with thee yet,
" Telling a tale of future years
" That shall thy bridal pillow wet
" With unavailing tears.

" When thy friends wish thee" Joy I" — the word
" Shall sound like mockery to thine ear ;
' And its dim echo haunt thy thoughts
'" Like a perpetual fear.

" But last, and most of all, beware
" The bridal kiss : — that seals thy doom ;
" Changing so foul what else were fair —
" A temple to a tomb.

" That renders even repentance vain ;—
" For as thy last faint smiles depart,
" A cold, dull, everlasting pain
" Shall settle at thy heart !"

STANZAS.

TO THE SAME.

I DREAD to think upon thy fate,
Yet all my thoughts will that way tend
Forms of the Past they recreate,
And with the Future blend.

Love consecrates the marriage bed ;
Without it all is guilt and gloom ;
A living form linked to a dead !—
A spirit in a tomb !

Better be senseless dust indeed, —
Of the vile flesh-worm's food a part, —
Than live to pamper worms that feed
Upon the living heart.

86 KE.JECTEL) ARTICLES.

To die is nothing ; but to feel
A living death creep thro' thy veins,
While hope yet lingers, not to heal,
But aggravate thy pains ; —

This is to neither live nor die —
Suffering at one the worst of both. —
What desperate hope starts to thine eye ?-
Beware ! — thy bridal oath !

Besides — I only pity thee :
Thy guilty weakness lost my love.
On earth thou hast nowhere to flee !
Xo hope — but '* Heaven above ! !"

DINING OUT.

BY " ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF REJECTED ADDRESSES/

DINING OUT.

ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF REJECTED ADDRESSES.

DINING OUT is an accomplishment in which we
English do not excel. It demands a certain po-
litic pliancy, both of mind and body, which we
cannot boast. It is that one among the Fine Arts
in which we are immeasurably behind our conti-
nental neighbours. In fact we are the worst
Diners-out in the world. We do not understand
the principle of it. Even the South Sea Islanders
understand and practice it better ; for when they
go to a dinner party, it is for the express purpose
of dining upon an enemy ; whereas an English-
man, when he does not dine at home, dines upon
his friend. The truth is, that in civilized society,
Dining out has nothing whatever to do with eating
and drinking. Who asks a man to dine out that
cannot afford to dine at home ?— The thing never

90 REJECTED ARTICLES.

happened. It is altogether incompatible with the
" scope and tendency" of dinner parties.

Not that one can dine out without eating and
drinking. But for that very reason, among others,
eating and drinking are but secondary consequences
of Dining Out, and are no causes of it at all. They
are necessary concomitants of it, to be sure; just
as tea accompanies talk in a party of elderly ladies,
and as love goes hand in hand (for a little way)
with marriage, in a youthful pair, of opposite sexes.
But eating and drinking have no more to do with
the immediate end of Dining Out, than love has
to do with that of marriage, or marriage with that
of love.

In England, there is nothing to be done, or
even undertaken, without a dinner party. From
the governing of the nation to the goings on of
the pettiest of its parishes, all begins and all ends
in a dinner. Accordingly, there is no country in
which dinner parties assume so pleasing a variety
as they do here. We have dinners on all occa-
sions,— from the Coronation of the King, to the
Christening of the newest born of his subjects ;
dinners in all places, — from the palaces of the
peers in Saint James's, to the back-slums of the
beggars in Saint Giles's ; dinners of all dimen-
sions,— from the calipash and calipee of the

DINING OUT. 91

cabinet minister, to the pot-luck of the cabinet
maker. We have dinners of all denominations :
diplomatic dinners, and patriotic dinners, and
pugilistic dinners, and parliamentary dinners ;
cabinet dinners and reform dinners ; ministerial
dinners and opposition dinners ; O. P. dinners and
P. S. dinners ; Pitt dinners and Fox dinners ;
election dinners, and theatrical dinners, and lite-
rary dinners, and scientific dinners. — Is a minister
to be ousted from his place ? The cabal is con-
cocted and carried on at a dinner party. Is a
million to be raised by a joint-stock company, in
order that certain clerks and projectors may be
able to dine in private ? — They must first assemble
the intended sufferers at a dinner in public. — Is a
chapel to be built, a charity founded, a school
formed, an institution established? — Ask the
public to dinner, and it is done. — Does a friend
want to borrow fifty pounds of you ? — He asks you
to dine with him at a tavern, and pays the bill with
your own money. — Even Mr. Owen cannot banish
vice from the world without the aid of a public
dinner — (nor with one either.) Nay — marriages
themselves — which are elsewhere " made in heaven"
— are here made at a dinner party arranged for the
purpose !

All this admitted, one would expect that John

92 REJECTED ARTICLES.

Bull, being so used to it, would make an excellent
Diner-out. As we have happily had opportunities
of meeting him at nearly all the different kinds
of dinner parties above alluded to, — as well as at
numerous others " too tedious to mention," as
the conjurors' advertisements have it, — we may
perhaps occasionally introduce the reader to some
of them, and enable him to judge for himself.
And if he should object to this, that Dining Out
in imagination is likely to afford but " lenten
entertainment," he may be assured that it will be
our fault if the reflection is not pleasanter to look
upon than the reality : for it must be a very hand-
some face indeed that does not look better in a
mirror than out of it.

The dinner party to which we now invite our
friends shall be one of that class which is perhaps
of all others the most characteristically English.
The family of the Tibbs's move in the first
circles of city life : in other words, they are never
to be seen in the city at all, except when they pay
an occasional visit of ceremony to Saint Mary
Axe, or " dine out" once in the season or so, at
Devonshire Square : for they would not be thought
proud, though they do reside near the Regent's
Park ! — The family consists, in the male branch, of
Mr. Tibbs and his son Thomas. Mr. T. the elder

DINING OUT. 93

is 3, person " engaged in mercantile pursuits/' as
his wife and daughters delicately phrase it ; but
according to his own less ambiguous and ambi-
tious version of the matter, he is a Manchester ware-
houseman. To say that he was formerly a " ware-
houseman" merely, without the " Manchester,"
and that in the very concern which he now owns,
is to describe him as at once shrewd, upright, and
not altogether without either pride, or prejudices.
Mr. Tibbs the elder has a son and heir, who, in
virtue of this latter quality in particular, is allowed
the privilege of persuading himself that he has a
soul altogether incapable of admitting the idea of
printed muslins, and which holds brown holland in
a natural abhorrence. Accordingly, he has received
the best education that Dr. Drill could prevail
upon him to accept, and is now near the end of
his term in an attorney's office.

The female Tibbs's are more numerous than the
males, and not less worthy of historical mention.
We must, however, touch upon the merits of each
but very slightly, or we shall not be in time to
assist at their dinner party. Mrs. Tibbs is by
no means " of a certain age :" which is saying,
in other words, that she is of a very certain age,
and doesn't care who knows it. She is moreover

94 REJECTED ARTICLES.

unaffectedly fond of her children ; so that there
is nothing in the shape of rivalry between them.
But she is fond of herself too ; for she is in the
habit of cherishing a very natural notion, that,
if one sets the example of not loving oneself, it
would be strange indeed if others did not follow
it ; seeing that we ourselves must necessarily be
the best possible judges of our own deserts. The
best of Mrs. Tibbs's self-love is, however, that she
is apt to consider her husband and children, and
even her house and furniture, as part and parcel
of herself, and is satisfied that in admiring them
you are admiring her. It must be confessed, in
passing, that in this Mrs. T. is more philosophical
than she is aware of: for to philosophy she
makes no pretensions whatever, and thinks that
in the family of an English merchant it would be
altogether out of place.

Mrs. Tibbs has three daughters ; Juliana and
Frances, who, being women grown, Mrs. Tibbs
considers as entitled to be called " the girls;" and
Jessica — who being born five years after the
youngest of the others, is destined to remain " the
child" till her sisters cease to be " the girls." The
said " girls" are, in their own house and their
own opinion, considered as vwyjine young women :

DINING OUT. 95

which epithet, being interpreted, signifies that
they are somewhat coarse. In fact, their Irish ad-
mirer (for he professedly admires them both at
present) Captain Castabout, is fain to confess
that their forms are constructed on a scale of con-
siderable magnitude, and that their ruddy com-
plexions indicate a degree of health amounting to
what is rudely enough denominated rude : so much
so, indeed, that Miss Priscilla Paleface, who re-
sides on the opposite side of the Place, cannot
abide to stand at the window when they go out :
she says they look as if they were painted, without
being so; which she thinks extremely vulgar at
best — not to say indecent.

In regard to the mental qualities and accom-
plishments of the two elder Miss Tibbs's — or as
the boards at the young ladies' seminaries insist
on having it, the Misses Tibbs — we have but
little to report at present. Suffice it that they
speak French with a propriety of accent peculiar
to English young ladies who have visited Paris ;
know enough of Italian to be able to explain
to Captain C. (who never fails to make the in-
quiry) that " Ah! perdona," means " I beg your
pardon ;" play the piano with a perseverance that
is truly praiseworthy, and a spirit that some of
their hearers characterize by the epithet which, as

H2

96 REJECTED ARTICLES.

we have hinted above, others apply to their appear-
ance of health ; and sing Moore's melodies in a
highly decorous style : by which latter we would be
understood to indicate that their execution of these
very " taking airs" is in no degree calculated to
endanger the morals of their hearers. Finally,
Juliana, the eldest Miss Tibbs, may, by particular
entreaty, be occasionally prevailed upon to bestow
her embraces on one of Erard's harps ; which pro-
cess she is accustomed to accomplish in so edi-
fying a fashion, that Captain C., who is gene-
rally present on these occasions, never fails to turn
round to his next male neighbour once or twice
during the exhibition, and favour him with a
knowing look, which the other, unless he happens
to be an Irishman, can seldom be prevailed upon
to understand.

It only remains to speak of little Jessica ; for
though she is still ranked as a school-girl at home,
she has left school nominally, and is therefore en-
titled to a permanent place in our family picture.
And yet we are half disposed to leave her out
altogether; since she is not exactly in keeping
with any other part of it. Let us pass her over
slightly, by saying that she is one of those plants
which are occasionally found to spring up, as if
spontaneously, in a soil and under circumstances

DINING OUT. 97

altogether uncongenial to them, or at least altoge-
ther unlikely to have produced them according to
the common course of things. She reminds one of
a lily of the valley in the midst of a bed of poppies,
or a delicate white rose starting from the same
root with a whole family of flaunting red ones.
There is a natural refinement about the little Jes-
sica— both of mind, manner, and person — which
has in fact no connexion whatever with place or
circumstances ; and into the causes of which we
are not in a mood sufficiently philosophical to pe-
netrate, even if this were a fit occasion. Suffice it
therefore to add that Jessica, " the gentle Jessica/'
was born a few days after her mama had been to
see the Merchant of Venice, and received her name
from the association of ideas attendant on that
circumstance. This is the only touch of the ro-
mantic that can be detected in the history of the
Tibbs's.

Be it known that Mr. and Mrs. Tibbs are
above the affectation of assembling all their friends
once or twice in a season to a crowded " At
Home," and treating them to thin negus, mis-
cellaneous biscuits, and a seat between six; — for
they shrewdly suspect that the said practice is
no less dictated by the parsimony of the in-
viters, than they know it to be destructive to the

98 REJECTED ARTICLES.

pleasure of the invited. They have no notion that
any thing is worth having, and therefore worth
offering, that costs nothing; and as they can
afford it, they never ask people to sit upon any
other chairs than their own. It is to one of the
dinner parties which grew out of this prejudice
(which, by the by, the most fastidious of their
friends admit to be an amiable one) that we shall
now introduce our readers. As. however, we have
not hitherto had any cause to indulge in a pique
against the said readers, we shall spare them the
trouble of forming one of the party as it remains
assembled in the drawing-room during the half
hour following that named in the invite: for if
there be an occasion when the genii of awkward-
ness and ennui take incarnate forms, and each
multiplies itself by eight, like Kehama, it is at
a party of sixteen assembled as aforesaid. We
will therefore join the Tibbs's party at the foot
of the stairs, and enter the dining-room with it
at once.

In ten minutes (and not less) the company were
seated to the satisfaction of Mrs. T., — who always
insists on managing these matters herself, and
utterly sets her face against that freewill which
she hears is making such alarming encroachments
in the realms of fashion : for she is of Lady Mac-

DINING OUT. 99

beth's opinion, that " the sauce to meat is cere-
mony." She thinks too, with the same hostess,
that

—the feast is sold

That is not often vouch'd, while 'tis a making,
'Tis given with welcome."

Accordingly, she expresses that welcome occa-
sionally during her feasts ; to the great scandal of
her son Thomas, who has imbibed notions which
she considers of a very heterodox nature in these
particulars ; and to the infinite horror on this oc-
casion of Miss Leftoff, the antiquated sister in law
of a city knight, at whose house in Nottingham
Place she occasionally dines, and whose fashionable
friends, she will venture to say, never made any
body welcome in their lives ! It need scarcely be
intimated that Miss L. took the precaution of ex-
pressing this opinion by looks alone.

Of the cates that displayed themselves on re-
moving the spacious cushion-shaped covers (for
the Tibbs's have not yet escaped from the Age of
Tin in this particular) we shall not give any minute
account ; merely stating that they maintained a
well-poised medium between the mere substantials,
clad au naturel, of the old English school, and the
" high fantasticals" of the modern French cuisine

100 REJECTED ARTICLES.

— that Monmouth-street of meats — where they get
dressed out in a hundred different fashions of se-
cond-hand frippery, in not one of which do their
best friends know them.

Dinner now commenced, and taciturnity began
at the same moment to sound a retreat. For an
Englishman, if he will talk at no other time, will
at his dinner. He then sees something before
him to talk about : which at other times he is
forced to imagine ; and that is too much trouble :
— for, whatever his friends or enemies may say to
the contrary, John Bull is the most poco-curante
animal in nature, and cares for nothing that does
not " come home to his business." — But let us
have no digressions /row our dinner, whatever we
may be obliged to endure at it.

Mrs.Tibbs had taken the precaution, as in duty
to her good dinner bound, of arranging the male
portion of her company with an eye to what her
covers concealed ; so that when they disappeared,
each party found himself opposite to the dish best
adapted to his dissecting talents. For the first
ten minutes, therefore, after the removal of the
accustomed soup and fish which never failed to
form the standing top and bottom of the Tibbs's
table, nothing was distinguishable but a somewhat
confused hubbub, consisting of the head* and tails

DINING OUT. 101

of phrases as disjointed as the contents of the
dishes to which they referred — such as " May I

be permitted " " Will you allow me "

" Really I'm quite ashamed " " Pray give

me leave " " I'm sorry to trouble you "

" The trouble's a pleasure " &c. &c. &c. By

the bye, we should not have permitted the afore-
said soup and fish to have entirely vacated their
places, without repeating an enormous pun apper-
taining thereto, which Mr. Tibbs the younger had
picked up at office that morning, and being a bit
of a wag, perpetrated on this occasion. And we
are the more unwilling that it should be defrauded
of its fame, seeing that the youth had magnanimity
enough to mulct himself of both soup and fish, in
order to have an opportunity of atcheiving it.
Both Mr. and Mrs. T. happened to ask him, nearly
at the same moment, which he would chuse, soup
or fish ; to which he replied, " with infinite promp-
titude," that he did not chuse either, for that
he was not a superficial person. This sally,
though it greatly scandalized Mr. Tibbs, the elder,
and fell entirely still-born on the ear of Mrs. T.,
was received by the company in general with great
eclat ; and moreover it had the important effect of
deciding the future fate of Mr. Deputy Double-
chin's youngest son — which had been resting in

102 EEJECTED ARTICLES.

equilibrio for the last six months, and which was
now finally fixed for an attorney's office — " it made
a lad so sharp," the Deputy said.

We must now let the dinner take its course till
the sweets come on ; for the remarks of city epi-
cures on the merits of any given dish are only edi-
fying when the dish itself happens to be at hand,
and the hearer can prove the truth of the dogma
laid down in regard to it. Suffice it that the gen-
tlemen had all " great pleasure in taking wine"
with each other, and that each of the ladies bowed
their heads sundry times across the table, in token
of their skill in practising the ingenious fiction of
doing the same without wetting their lips : for
ladies in the class of those with whom we have at
present the pleasure of associating, (especially un-
married ones,) have a notion that they are bound
to take wine with every body who asks them, and
are at the same time bound to avoid taking wine at
all, as studiously as if they were Mussulmans. A
young lady from the city, who should be detected
in taking two glasses of wine at dinner, would
expect her father's clerk to make love to her the
next day, and would not be very angry if he did.

Towards the latter end of a dinner-party, if at
all, an Englishman begins to feel a disposition to
hear himself talk. Accordingly, then it was that

DINING OUT. 103

the topics of the day began to be discussed at the
table of the Tibbs's. And who, after having been
present at a party of this kind, shall say that busi-
ness and politics are the only subjects in which
Englishmen of the middle classes take an interest,
and that literature, and the fine arts, do not enjoy
their due share of consideration ? On the present
occasion Mrs. Tibbs herself introduced the subject
of literature even before the cloth was drawn, by
observing that she understood from her girls Sir
Walter Scott's last new play of Woodstock was not
near so clever as two that he wrote some time ago
called Guy Mannering and Rob Roy ; and which
latter, as she intimated, some person had expanded
into a book of several volumes — for she had seen
it lying on Mrs. Lightblue's library table. " La,
Ma ! ' — exclaimed Juliana, somewhat impatiently,
on hearing Mrs. T. make this unexpected sally
into the confines of literature — " I'm sure we told
you no such thing. And how you do confuse
things together ! — Why Guy Mannering is an
opera, written by Mr. Bishop ; and it was Mr.
Terry, the actor, who wrote Rob Roy, and Sir
Walter himself who afterwards made it into a
novel."—" Well, my love"— said Mrs. T.— " you
know I don't pretend to understand so much about
these things as you do. But what was that" — she

104 REJECTED ARTICLES.

continued — for she likes to display her daughter's
knowledge, even at the expense of her own —
" what was that you were telling me, about Sir
Walter Scott being known among his friends by
the title of the great unknown 1 What do they
mean by calling him the Great Unknown ? I
thought he was better known than body, except
' the author of Waverly/ and the court of Alder-
men."— "Dear me, Ma!" — said Frances — "why
you're at your confusions again — ' the author of
Waverly' died long before we were born. Why
Waverly was written ' sixty years ago,' It says
so in the title-page."

Luckily the noise of knives and forks, and the
clearing of the table, prevented this enlightened
colloquy from extending beyond the immediate
precincts in which it was uttered, and where the
subjects of it were not sufficiently interesting to
render its little errors of any importance ; and by
the time the desert and wine were placed on the
table, all thoughts of it had passed away, and
given place to a discussion which now arose, rela-
tive to the progress of the fine arts in this country ;
in which discussion all the party seemed fully
qualified and prepared to take their share. The
point in question was, the comparative merits of
that year's Exhibition at Somerset House, (then

DINING OUT. 105

open,) and the previous year's; — the point having
been started in consequence of some remark on
the merits of a whole length likeness of Mr.
Tibbs the elder, which had been recognised that
very morning by two of the party, notwithstanding
its modest alias of " portrait of a gentleman." On
this question, as to the aforesaid progress of the
fine arts generally, it is singular that every one of
the party had fully made up their minds. It is no
less singular too, that the judgments were pretty
equally divided ; about one half being decidedly
of opinion that the Exhibition this year was
" much better" than that of last year, and the
other half feeling equally satisfied that it was
" not near so good :" both parties agreeing, how-
ever, that there were " a great many portraits ;"
and that the rooms were " exceedingly warm," arid
the company " very mixed !"

By this time the wine had passed round two or
three times ; and as this proceeded in its regular
course (out of which Mr. T. never permits it to
swerve on any consideration whatever) most of the
various topics of the day came by turn into dis-
cussion ; and we may venture to say that not one
of them was treated with a less conspicuous share
of acumen and discrimination than had been dis-
played in regard to the above. What was said on

106 REJECTED ARTICLES.

any of these subjects it would be obviously improper
for us to report at any length, however edifying
such a report might be. Suffice it to add, that,
after the fifth glass of wine, politics, as it always
does on similar occasions, became the sole order of
the day. Whereupon the ladies, accepting this as a
very intelligible signal that their company could
be dispensed with, retired to the drawing-room ;
and each gentleman proceeded to take advantage of
the first opportunity that offered, of expressing his
own particular opinions on the prominent political
events and topics of the past week ; each availing
himself, respectively, of the particular newspaper
to which he was attached, and each of course
being " decidedly of opinion" with that. As po-
litics is a subject not to ;be ousted when once it
gets a fair footing at an English after-dinner table,
and as it is one with which we do not profess to
meddle, we shaR now silently take our leave :
though we were perhaps bound to consider the
Dinner Party of the day as virtually at an end,
the moment the ladies left the table.

H.

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE

BY PROFESSOR W-

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE.

No. 2.,

ROMEO AND JULIET.

BY PROFESSOR W .

MY DEAR FRIEND,

AFTER a long protracted silence, I again venture
to address you, on the subject of that divine
mind whose productions have so often occupied
and delighted our minds— not without occasion-
ally overshadowing, and even overwhelming them,
with a sense of its wondrous and superhuman
power. And in truth, I am fain to confess my
belief, that it is the perhaps half-unconscious
presence of this sense, perpetually pressing upon
me whenever I have turned my thoughts to this
subject, which has so long deterred me from
fulfilling my promise, of communicating to you,

* Continued from Black wood's Magazine, vol. 2. p. 512.

114 REJECTED ARTICLES.

in something like a regular and tangible form,
those views and feelings which we have so often
discussed together, touching the true individual
characters of Shakespeare's principal dramatic
works.

It is not that I have feared to approach the
footstool of this mighty being — this god among
men ; or that I have felt abashed in his ima-
ginary presence: for HE too has said, in senti-
ment if not in words, " Let little children come
unto me, and I will not turn them away." (To
you, who know my heart, I need not disclaim,
in this allusion, anything approaching to levity,
or a disposition towards the undue mingling of
sacred things with profane.) It is not, I say,
that in entering the presence of this great repre-
sentative of all the various powers of the divinely
human intellect of man, I have experienced a
more than ordinary sense of my own comparative
nothingness, and have shrunk backward abashed at
the contemplation : for it is one of the finest and
most characteristical qualities of Shakespeare's
mind, that, on feeling ourselves within the sphere
of its action and influence, all egotism, whether
it be of a vain-glorious and self-exalting, or of
an equally vain-glorious though self-abasing na-

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 115

ture, melts utterly away, and becomes merged and
lost in an all absorbing sentiment of mingled ad-
miration and love ; an admiration, however, and
a love, which have for their object nothing more,
after all, than human attributes and qualities ;
and which therefore inspire us with anything
rather than contempt for the form that we wear,
and the mind that gives it life and motion. It
is, in fact, only a man that we are listening to ;
and being men ourselves, we cannot chuse but
listen with something like secret self-congratu-
lations, on the possible greatness and beauty and
power of our common nature.

No — if I am ever disposed to sink into an un-
due despondency of heart, and to let my coward
thoughts fly before the conquering spirit of
doubt that will sometimes beset them, I have
only to make my stand within the stronghold of
Shakespeare, and I feel instantly revived and re-
instated and re-assured ; and the very spot that
I had entered the moment before, cowering and
crest-fallen, I am ready the next moment to
quit, erect, stedfast, and heart-whole. No— of
all those master-spirits upon whom we call, and
bid them " minister to a mind diseased/' he is
the only one who does not, in the end, refer

j 2

116 REJECTED ARTICLES.

the patient back to himself; — he and he alone is
able to

" Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Rase out the written troubles of the brain,
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart."

In short, it is he alone who can make us feel —
what we never should have felt without him —
the full value and virtue of our own hearts, and
minds, and affections, and passions, and powers
— in a word, of our own mighty and mysterious
nature.

If I remember rightly, I remarked to you in
my first letter, that all the great works of Shake-
speare have within them that oneness, that unity
of purpose, which is demanded by Aristotle as
an essential quality of the highest species of
drama: though, assuredly, I did not pretend to
state that the quality I speak of is atchieved in
the manner directed by Aristotle; namely, by
making every part of the action grow out of that
part immediately preceding it, and thus ren-
dering each part at once a cause and an effect.

No — this was not Shakespeare's way, becn.use

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 117

it was not Nature's. It might easily be demon-
strated, that in every separate portion of actual
life which includes a sufficient degree, of passion
to make it susceptible of a dramatic representa-
tion, there is, in effect, a perfect unity of charac-
ter. But no one will pretend that that unity is
produced, even once out of a hundred times, by
the mere mechanical course and concatenation of
the events which occupy the period in question.
On the contrary, anything like such a mechani-
cal linking together, and dependence upon, one
event and another, would go nigh to destroy
that real unity of the imagination, which is what
Shakespeare aims at and atchieves.

To make what I mean more clear, let us turn
at once to the drama which I have chosen for
the immediate subject of my present letter, and
which, if I mistake not, is even more deeply
imbued with this dramatic unity of imagina-
tion than any other of its wondrous author's
productions.

The unity which belongs to the play of Romeo
and Juliet, consists in that spirit of youth which
everywhere penetrates and pervades it — even from
the flow of its language and the music of its
rhythm, to the very depths and innermost recesses

118 REJECTED ARTICLES,

of that passion which is its nominal subject : I
say its "nominal" subject; for, paradoxical as
the assertion may at first seem, love is not the real
subject of this tragedy, but only the accidental,
or rather the incidental one — incidental to it, sim-
ply because it is, in an incomparably greater degree
than all other passions, incidental to that state
of being which is the essential subject of the
work.

If Shakespeare had proposed to himself to
illustrate and make manifest the various move-
ments and qualities appertaining to and consti-
tuting the passion of love, would he have made
it the first action of his lover to rise from the
feet of one mistress, and, without a moment's
pause, throw himself before another ; forgetting
from that time forth that the first had ever
existed, much less held him in thrall? Is this
the character of love ? No : — but it is the cha-
racter of youth, and therefore Shakespeare has
made his youthful man exhibit it : for Romeo is
not a lover, nor any other individual modifica-
eation of the human character • he has, in fact,
no individual and determinate character at all,
but is a general specimen of MAN — a pure ab-
straction of our human nature — at that particular

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 119

period of its being which occurs exactly between
boyhood and maturity, and which we call, by way
of distinction, the period of Youth.

Is it a characteristic of love — I mean of that
profound mental passion of which I am now
speaking — to start into life in an instant, at the
mere lightning glance of beauty, and to reach
its full and perfect maturity even in the very
hour of its birth ? Oh, no ! — but it is the cha-
racteristic of that other love, which constitutes
so great and absorbing a portion of the " beings
end and aim" of Youth.

I am confident, my dear friend, that you will
not mistake me, in what I am now saying. You
will not suspect me of wishing — nay, of daring
— to breathe the slightest suspicion of impurity
over the enchanting passion and persons of the
lovers in this drama, or to throw a doubt upon
the right of that passion to be called love. It
was a love " pure as the thought of purity" —
pure as is that purely intellectual love of which
I have just spoken, and which cannot co-exist
with impurity. It was as pure as that ; but it
was not that.

It is not my purpose to institute a comparative
estimate of these two different kinds of love, but
only to mark the distinction which exists be-

1:20 11 EJECTED ARTICLES.

tvveen them. And in order to this, let me say
that they differ, as everything must differ, the
sources of which are not the same. They differ,
as the earth differs from the heavens — or rather
as their productions differ ; for one of these pas-
sions is the production of the heavenly within us,
and the other of the earthly. But the latter is
equally pure with the former, when it exists in
the state in which they possessed it whose history
we are examining ; and it differs from its relative
only as the flowers differ from the stars, or as phy-
sical beauty differs from intellectual. Is the rose
impure because its roots are in the earth, and its
nourishment springs from thence ? Neither then
is the love of Romeo and Juliet impure because its
roots and its food are in the flesh, not in the
spirit.

But let us look a little more closely into the
characteristic qualities of this most enchanting
of all dramas — most enchanting to all of us, be-
cause it offers, to those who are still the happy
denizens of that state of being which it represents,
an echo of the rich music that is for ever ring-
ing in their hearts ; and to those who have passed
through that state, it recalls and revives and re-
creates all that sanctified and made it sweet.

At the opening of the play, we find the hero of

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 121

it as deeply in love (as the phrase is) as words,
even the words of Shakespeare, can describe him
to be. He is altogether a creature of passion ;
floating this way and that on the waves of it ;
blown hither and thither by its winds ; now borne
downwards into its darkest depths, arid now rapt
upward to it highest and brightest heavens ; one
moment revelling in its richest fields of hope and
happiness, and the next bound hand and foot in
the dungeons of its despair.

Let it be observed, too, that we hear of all this
passion, long before we hear of its object ; and
the reader who comes to the perusal of Romeo and
Juliet for the first time, imagines, of course, that
it is Juliet who inspires it all; or rather, he does not
tax his imagination on the subject, or ever think
of inquiring, but takes it for granted. And I am
inclined to fear, too, that when he first comes to
discover that all these transports are felt for an-
other, and not for Juliet, he is at least disappoint-
ed, if not displeased or indignant.

And yet the above is, beyond comparison, that
point in the character which shows its creator in
the most extraordinary light — which most clearly
evinces the subtlety of his conceptions, and his
astonishing boldness in developing them. No
poet that ever lived, except Shakespeare, would

122 'REJECTED ARTICLES.

have thought of proving the depth and sincerity
of his hero's love for his present mistress, by re-
presenting him as feeling and expressing it for the
first time, in the very presence of her who was his
mistress half an hour ago, and for whom he would
then have professed and acted all that he now will
for his new one. And yet, instead of feeling that
Romeo's late professions of love for Rosaline throw
any suspicion upon the sincerity of his present
love for Juliet, there can be no doubt whatever
that the effect is exactly the reverse. I say the
effect ; for I believe that those (even among female
readers) who make it a question with themselves
whether this fickleness, as they would call it, does
or does not affect the value of Romeo's later
passion, are at first inclined to determine, that at
any rate Rosaline had his first love. But let a
Romeo of real life transfer his transports from an-
other to them ; and at the same time, let another
adorer of equal pretensions, lay at their feet the
premices of his heart ; and see whether they will
not incline to the first rather than the second.
And this, not from any feeling of gratified vanity
at the preference, but from an instinctive sense of
the spontaneous nature of the love of youth, arid
its consequent incapacity of waiting for a particu
lar object before it becomes developed. Every

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 123

woman believes, and is bound to believe, that she
is the only object that could have jfcrerf her lover.
But she does not think him the less fixed because
his love was lent to another before it was given to
her; nor does she covet it the less because she
cannot look upon herself as its creator. It is for
man, not woman, to cherish a feeling so nearly
allied to selfishness.

But another effect of representing Romeo as ex-
perienced in the ways of love, long before he meets
with the true object of it, is, to aggrandise our
sense of the power and weight of his passion,
when it comes to be transferred to its ultimate
destination. It was absolutely necessary to the
conduct of the story, that we should see the
commencement of the love of Romeo for Juliet.
And it was equally necessary that -we should
attach a certain value and importance to that
love. But we have no great faith in either
the force or the stability of a passion which is
conceived and born before our eyes. Accordingly,
Romeo is placed before us, the very concentration
or personification of passion. " Passion 1" Mer-
cutio calls him ; as if it were his name. He is all
made up of it. And when he sees what we all
along feel to be the legitimate object of that
passion, he has nothing to do but pour it all out

124 It EJECT EL) ARTICLES.

into her heart, and disburthen himself of what has
hitherto been pressing upon him with a weight
" heavy as frost, and deep almost as life ;" but
heavy and oppressive only because it could not
find the object that was destined to receive and
share it : as the clouds go heavily and darkly
along, while they are surcharged with the bright
rain, but become bright and bouyant themselves
the moment they come near enough to the earth
to part with their fertilizing burthen.

If Romeo's love had been the love of a moment,
we should never have endured the train of conse-
quences that flow from it, but should have regard-
ed them in the anomalous light of effects without
an adequate cause. But as it is, that weight of
passion (the accumulation of years perhaps) which
he pours forth at once into the heart of Juliet the
moment he beholds her, is cause enough for any
effect that can flow from it.

I will not scruple to confess, that the good effect
which is produced by Romeo presenting himself
before Juliet with a heart already filled to over-
flowing with passion, is not gained without some
counterbalancing evil. And if Rosaline, the first
object of that passion, had been brought forward
in the play, in a visible form, this evil would have
been still more manifest. But, to sny nothing of

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 1'25

her not returning his passion, she is but a name
in our imagination, after all — not a person. And,
to shew how entirely Shakespeare has gained
his object in making Rosaline only a name, it is
but necessary to appeal to every ordinary reader
and spectator of the play, who, on referring to
their feelings on the point in question, will
find that they scarcely remember that such a per-
son is alluded to.

If, indeed, Rosaline had been represented to us
as the accepting aiid accepted mistress of Romeo,
and his change of allegiance had come upon us
in the light of a desertion, the case would have
been widely different, and its effect on the whole
after part of the drama would have been mischie-
vous, and indeed intolerable.

But why, you ask, contemplate a case which
was never contemplated by Shakespeare ? I ac-
cept the reproof, and at once return to him and
his divine work ; — for I shall have quite enough to
do to explain to you my views of what this play is,
without speculating on what it might have been.

The love of Romeo and Juliet must be re-
garded, then, as the manifestation of that passion
(call it by what name you will) which is the
dominating spirit of that period of human life of
which these lovers are the type and representa-

126 REJECTED ARTICLES.

tivc ;— a period when to live and to love are one,
and the life of which and its love expire together ;
as we see mystically shadowed forth in the deaths
of these two beings. It has every characteristic
of that period : its headlong precipitancy ; its
heedless rashness ; its total disregard of all
worldly considerations or consequences ; its en-
thusiastic ardour of aspiration, and force of will ;
its unhesitating confidence in the reality of all
which does but seem, whether of good or of
evil ; its pronesss to seize, without an instant's
delay, on all that the hand of pleasure proffers,
without asking the price, or calculating the com-
parative value ; and above all, that boundless ca-
pacity for enjoyment and for suffering, which one
moment lifts it to the highest empyrean of bliss,
and the next sinks it to the lowest dungeons of
despair.

So true does it seem to me that Romeo and
Juliet are mere abstractions, or rather that the
two are an abstraction of human life at a par-
ticular period of it ; or, perhaps it were better to
say, of the human being in its dual state, of
man and woman; that if we examine our feel-
ings in regard to their characters, (as we are ac-
customed to phrase it,) we shall find that we do
not recognize anything in the shnpe of indivi-

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 127

duality, or of intellectual portraiture, in either of
them : which I will venture to say is not the case
with any one other of the creations of Shakes-
peare's hand.

Neither do we connect with the lovers any ima-
ginary association whatever, appertaining to ex-
ternal form : which truth, if it be one, is equally
with the above confined to them alone.

If we were to descend from this general state-
ment of the proposition, and examine every se-
parate sentiment or sentence uttered by each of
them throughout the play, it would probably lead
to the same conclusion. And the reason is, that
they utter, not the results of that complicated
condition of being which we call character, and
which consists of a thousand modifying influences
and impulses ; but of passion — passion, which is
one and indivisible, and which is the same yes-
terday, to-day, and for ever ; — passion, which
circumstances may repress, or keep out of sight,
or even destroy ; but which nothing can change ;
which is in fact not susceptible of change, in the
very nature of things ; because it is in our pas-
sions that our human being consists ; and while
that remains, they must remain too ; and while
they remain, their result must be universally and
unchangeably the same.

128 REJECTED ARTICLES.

Such, my dear friend, are the conceptions which
I have formed of the two principal persons of this
divinely human work. Let me not quit them,
however, without following them to their fragrant
grave, and seeing them quietly inurned there : for,
untimely as that grave is, it is still sweet, since
each finds it in the arms of the other, and ex-
hales over it the sweetest sighs that were ever
breathed from the lips of loveliness.

Let me approach it, too, without a thought of
sorrow, nor shed over it one profaning tear ;
for they whom it encloses shed none, but laid
themselves down in it as if it had been their
bridal bed : which in truth it was ; for they had
no other.

No — let us utter no idle lamentations over the
early deatli of these lovers, either on their ac-
count, or our own ; for had they lived they would
have ceased to be lovers, both for us and for
themselves. If the flowers were not to die almost
in the hour of their birth, they would be born in
vain ; and if the state of being which these lovers
typify were not as fleeting as it is fair, its fairness
would be forgotten or disregarded long before it
was passed away.

Doubtless Shakespeare intended that this should
be the condition of our feelinq-s in regard to the

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. '129

deaths of Romeo and Juliet ; for he has inflicted
no positive pain upon them, either physical or
intellectual ; no " longing, lingering looks" are
cast behind them as they pass away from our
sight ; but all is anticipation and hope ; each being
dead to the other, and each therefore hastening to
join its other self. It is to each as if its soul
had passed away beforehand, and there was no-
thing left for the deserted body to do, but melt
meekly into the bosom of its parent earth, and
mingle with the elements from whence it arose.

The catastrophe of Romeo and Juliet is ex-
pressly contrived with a view to this avoidance of
all painful impressions at our parting with this
pair of " star-crossed lovers ;" and no other ar-
rangement but that which has been adopted could
have accomplished this view. As for Juliet, —
" the weaker vessel " — she is put gently to sleep
the moment that adverse circumstances are at
hand ; and she only awakes to see her lord lying
at her feet, and to ponr forth her soul into his still
warm bosom. While he, having been struck
dead at once, in spirit, by the account of her
death, has nothing to do, and never for an instant
even thinks of doing anything, but seek himself
out " a triumphant grave," and pass into it,
drinking an almost jocund health to his love : for

130 RK.JECTEl) ARTICLES.

that he feels to be immortal, even at the very mo-
ment when its object lies dead before his eyes.

Let it be observed, too, that none of the
ordinary concomitants of death are admitted
into this closing scene of the lives of our lovers.
As for Juliet, — her beauty is upon her, bright as
ever. And though, from the supposed truth of
his information as to her death, Romeo believes
her to be dead, yet he evidently feels that she is
not dead, and dies himself in the half-voluptuous
kiss that recals her to life.

" Here's to my love !" * * * *
* * * " Thus with a kiss I die !"

While she, so recalled to life, does but ask for
her husband ; and at once finding him, and find-
ing him not, replies to his kiss by another, (the
first and the last of each) and so dies too, with
the " warm" pressure of his lips upon hers.

" Thy lips are warm !"

What is there of death here? what of the
grave ? It is but the spirit of youth, exhaling
itself away in sweet sighs, to the music of meet-
ing lips. And if you would not think me too
fanciful, I would add,— with reference to what I

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 131

have before hinted, as to the nature of Romeo and
Juliet's love, — that this scene is, perchance, merely
'intended to be typical of the natural and necessary
death of that particular species of love which
cannot survive fruition even for a moment, at
least under its original form and character; but,
when it does survive it, assumes a new form, and
rises into that intellectual love which is immortal
as the soul that is its seat. Each of the lovers
seeks death — each dies willingly, and without a
reverting look — and each expires instantly on
pressing its lips to those of the other. And we
may, if we please, fancy that each presently arises
from its " triumphant grave," in another and a
better world ; assoiled from all its earthly weak-
nesses and woes, and living, and to live for ever.

Perhaps I ought to apologize, even to you, for
dwelling so long on this particular point in the
drama, and still more for dwelling on it in terms
which I fear you will at least not admire for their
sobriety. But the truth is, I never can keep
my feelings, in regard to this part of the drama,
(and therefore not my expressions), within very
strict bounds, when I think upon the base and
senseless profanation which has been practised on
it by some ignorant modern hand, and universally
adopted by the still more ignorant players in their

K 2

132 11 EJECTED ARTICLES.

representation of it. The catastrophe was not
tragic enough, forsooth ; and they must have the
lovers meet face to face, and die in each others
arms by lingering torments : the one torn to
pieces in body by the physical effects of the poi-
son, and in mind by the still more terrible poison
of rage and despair at seeing his lady living after
he has killed himself to be with her ; and the
other, racked and riven still more fearfully at the
sight of all these horrors, — till she has scarcely
strength left in her tender body and exhausted
mind, to let out that life which it would be mad-
ness to keep a moment longer, after witnessing the
scene which they make her witness !

But let us not be too angry with those who
knew not what they did, and whose crime in-
cluded its own punishment. We need not wish
them worse than to want that which, having, they
could not have perpetrated the profanation of
which I speak. Though it is scarcely just to
indulge towards them any feeling approaching to
pity and forgiveness, when we recollect how many
thousands of their betters they have deprived of
that delight which they will now never experience,
of witnessing the true and natural catastrophe of
this drama, and of enjoying it as their natural
sense of the true and beautiful would have led

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 133

them to do : for there can be little doubt that,
even in this age of readers, scarcely one person
in a thousand knows any thing of Shakespeare, but
what they have seen on the stage.

Let us now return to a more general consider-
ation of this divine drama. It is not in the two
principal persons alone that that spirit of youth
prevails, which I have spoken of as the predomi-
nating character of the work. All are alike em-
bued with it ; it renders all buoyant and full of
life ; it is an abiding presence which pervades
and interpenetrates all, and in so doing creates
that dramatic unity of effect which is so indis-
pensable to the highest species of drama, and
which is so rarely to be met with out of Shakes-
peare.

A glance at the principal secondary characters
will make manifest the truth of what I am
stating. What is old Capulet, but a grey-headed
youth ? Age has had its inevitable effect upon
his body, it is true ; for physical things cannot
resist it. But his mind has escaped its power, and
is as young as when he was a hair-brained school-
boy. He is as eager and hot-hearted in the pur-
suit of an imaginary quarrel, as he was then ;
as delighted at the anticipation of a feast and
revelry, and as animated and light-hearted when

134 REJECTED ARTICLES.

it arrives ; as precipitate in making up his mind
on points of vital importance, and as headstrong
in maintaining his hasty determinations; as free
and generous in his expenditure ; as happy at the
sight of others happiness ; — in short, he has no
one quality of age, but that one which half-trans-
lates age into youth, by recalling and recreating
all that it then felt, and thought, and acted : I
mean its gay-hearted garrulousness. An old man
who is perpetually talking over the exploits of his
youth, and finds no lack of listeners, is happier
than when he was acting them ; and, in effect,
he is younger ; for he has already reached that
period the anticipation of which is the only curse
of youth : he is young, without the fear before
him of growing old.

The rest of the old people are scarcely less hap-
pily gifted than Capulet. Even Friar Lawrence
is no exception. However he may deceive him-
self and others by having wise proverbs on his lips,
his heart is as young as a romantic school-girl's ;
and he does not hesitate for a single instant (any
more than she would) to assist his young friend
and pupil in committing an insane marriage with
the daughter of his direst foe.

" Wisely and slow ; they stumble that run fast;"
he says. And then he goes immediately and marries

LETTERS ON'SHAKESPEARE. 135

a couple, whose acquaintance is the growth of
half an hour !

He is a poet, too. Not a word he utters but
what is steeped in the rich music of the imagi-
nation. And poets are ever young. Hark how
he greets the first approach of the lady Juliet to
his lonely cell. It is the very spirit of youth and
of poetry combined, that speaks :

" Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flints.
A lover may bestride the gossamers
That idle in the wanton summer air,
And yet not fall : so light is vanity !"

And as for the delightful old Nurse — she is the
youngest of all the party. Her tongue seems to
have the power as well as the privilege of child-
hood ; and whether it has anything or nothing to
say, runs babbling on like a summer brook.

But if the old people are all young, what shall
we say of the young ones? of Mercutio, Tybalt,
County Paris, and the rest ? —What—but that they
are all more or less embued with the prevailing
spirit of the drama ; and that in none of them is
that spirit blended with any other ;— and that the
first named— Mercutio— is the very quintessential
extract— the spirit of that spirit. He is as young

136 REJECTED ARTICLES.

as the rest of his companions, without like them
having yet tasted of that bitter-sweet fruit of
youth which is the first step towards age. He is
like them in all other respects ; but with this (to
him at least) manifest advantage over them — that
he can jest all day long at that which is the only
serious thing in the world to them. And even
when death comes upon him in the midst of his
mad-brained joy, he will not yield to the sum-
mons, but struggles jestingly against it ; as if it
were nothing more than an impertinent creditor
arresting him on his way to a feast.

There is still one other person of this drama,
whom you must not suppose that I have forgotten ;
still less must you imagine that I would inten-
tionally overlook him, from any feeling that his
introduction militates against that unity of effect
which, I have said, is so finely spread over the
whole design, and wrought into the whole texture,
of this perfect work. I mean the Apothecary.
So far from wishing to do so, I conceive that he is
no less essential to the due bringing-out of the
effect (to use a painter's phrase), than any one other
person in the drama. And this alone is a suffi-
cient reason for finding him here.

But even putting aside this view of the matter, —
if it were not for him, the impression received

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 137

from the whole work would be too buoyant, and
full of the spirit of youth, to be a true echo of
any impression which we can receive from the
contemplation of any actual portion of our human
life : which imitative impression is what every
one of Shakespeare's dramas is intended to create,
and in fact does create.

The two extremes of our existence — Life and
Death — like all other extremes, meet. They are
necessary corollaries from each other ; and we can
no more contemplate one absent from the other,
than we can the two extremes of a continuous
line. Now, the idea of the Apothecary perpetually
haunts our imagination when we are thinking
of the play of Romeo and Juliet, just as the idea
of Death haunts it when we are thinking even of
the brightest and freshest portions of our Human
Life. And the idea just as little disturbs the
general impressions we receive in either case. It
does not disturb, but only modifies them, by
blending them with others, which, in taking
away a little of their brightness, add to rather
than diminish their moral beauty. The idea, in
both cases, serves but as a gentle memento rnori, —
endearing the objects and images with which it
blends ; even as I have seen it do in the burial-
places of a foreign land, when engraven on a

1 3 8 II E J E C T E D A R T I C L E S .

little cross of black wood, planted on an infant's
grave, and almost hidden among the bright flowers
that garland and grow around it.

Permit me, my dear friend, before closing this
inordinately long letter, to warn you (though I feel
assured that the warning is superfluous) against
judging of what I have now said of this sweetest,
gentlest, and most perfect of all Shakespeare's
productions, in the presence of any of those im-
pressions which you may have received from
witnessing the acted play. And this warning is
particularly necessary (if at all) in connection with
the latter part of my remarks. I have there sup-
posed that this drama requires some one idea or
image, to balance that exuberant spirit of life
which everywhere pervades it ; and that, there-
fore, Shakespeare has introduced the one alluded
to. Need I add, then, that I speak of Shake-
speare's drama, not of that which has been polluted
by the impudent interpolations of the players ?
Heaven knows, the general impression left by the
catastrophe of this latter, when represented, as we
have seen it, by consummate actors, is enough to
embitter a whole after life, and half blight the re-
collections of the past, however bright they may
have been ! Assuredly, that is enough to coun-
terbalance a thousand fold all the buovancv that

LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. 139

has gone before it, even though the " overwhelm-
ing brows," and haggard, and famine stricken
visage of the poor Apothecary, were to be trans-
formed, by the same kind of play-house magic,
into the sparkling eyes and rubicund cheeks of
some fat and contented friar: which transforma-
tion, by the bye, would be quite as natural and
necessary to the consistency of the work.

No— never did I see an essential change made
in any of Shakespeare's dramas, that was not in-
finitely for the worse ; and this is infinitely the
worst of all. So that you will not wonder if I
am a little anxious that you should not inadver-
tently try anything I have said of Romeo and
Juliet, by the impressions received from this ver-
sion of it — which absolutely destroys the very
essence of its character, and changes it, so far as
regards the catastrophe, from a perfect drama of
the very highest class, into a paltry we/o-drama, of
the very lowest.

It was my intention to have said something on
the poetry of this divine production, both as dis-
tinguished from, and as blended with, its passion ;
and also of the exquisite language in which both
are conveyed. But 1 must reserve these remarks
for another letter. Your affectionate friend,

T. C.

GRIMM'S GHOST.

THE CULPEPPERS ON THE CONTINENT.

BY THE OTHER OF THE AUTHORS OF " REJECTED ADDRESSES.

GRIMM'S GHOST.*

THE CULPEPPERS ON THE CONTINENT.

BY THE OTHER OF THE AUTHORS 6F " REJECTED ADDRESSES."

THE Culpeppers and the Dixons have made nu-
merous and noticeable advances in the ways of
haut ton, since I last had occasion to report pro-
gress on their proceedings. It is true they still
" hang out," (as Ned Culpepper in his less re-
fined moments phrases it), in Savage Gardens,
• — seeing that the leases of their respective resi-
dences have yet some years to run, and neither
party has hitherto hit upon any effectual method
of quickening the pace of those parchment
ponies. But in default of being able to remove
their domiciles to the desiderated purlieus of the
Regent's Park, they have done what they justly
deem the next best thing, in transferring, as
much as may be, the air of the said Park to

* See New Monthly Magazine passim.

144 REJECTED ARTICLES.

Savage Gardens. Not being at present in a con-
dition to go to the mountain, they have con-
trived to make the mountain come to them. In
short, by the aid of Mr. Parker's patent cos-
metic for the cure of cracks in the complexions
of decaying walls, (which, by the bye, like all
other cosmetics, requires to be " laid on with a
trowel'*), they have struck off a century from
the seeming age of their now " modern antique"
dwellings, and made them as pretty illustrations
as need be of " the Deformed Transformed."

Both parties, too, were determined " not to
stick at trifles," as Ned reports, " but do the
thing handsome while they were about it." And
accordingly, this memorable change has been
effected no less intns than in cute; and now,
Captain Augustus Thackery would no more re-
cognise the dark, dingy drawing-room, with its
grey wainscotted walls, in which I have recorded
his first hospitable reception by the Culpeppers,
than he did his own face in the glass the other day,
after having permitted it to be so pitilessly mulct
of the major part of its mustachios.

The said drawing-room has been forced, by
the friendly intervention of a pair of folding
doors, into a fashionable alliance with its late
neighbour the back bed-room adjoining, and the

GRIMM'S GHOST. 145

latter has of course assumed the name and arms
of the former ; while the windows of each have
been duly cut down to the floor and raised up to
the ceiling, according to the newest mode in that
case made and provided for letting in the cold ;
and the antique mouldings of the wainscot have
been macadamized into a smooth plain of French
tapisserie, on which the whole heathen mythology
are manifesting themselves under the most amiable
attitudes.

The furniture has also undergone a no less
radical reform. The grim old Kidderminster is
discarded in favour of a brilliant Brussels of a
kaleidoscope pattern. The eight huge, stiff-legged
and high-shouldered arm-chairs, each as big as a
sofa-bedstead, have been changed for a dozen of
trim little rose-wood receptacles, with legs as
crooked as ram's horns, and backs that laugh
lolling to scorn ; besides a tastily-turned Grecian
couch to match, — constructed (for the con-
venience of modern Routers) on the express prin-
ciple of preventing people from going to sleep :
— to say nothing of a settee in each window, the
like of which, as Old Culpepper facetiously ob-
serves, was never seen in the Cittee before.

As for the rest of the furniture, it has under-
gone an entire " French Revolution." There is

L

146 REJECTED ARTICLES.

a French Console in the pier; (" Consols are
deuced high!" said old C. when he saw the
bill of it) ; a French clock and French china on
the mantle-piece; a French glass over the fire-
place ; French lamps on the French-fashioned
card-tables ; and French polish on everything in
the room, except its inhabitants.

Perhaps it was an amiably unconscious con-
sciousness of this last-named deficiency, which
prompted the similar and simultaneous proposal
of Mrs. Culpepper and Mrs. Dixon to their re-
spective, respected, and respectable spouses, the
results of which I am now to report : premising,
however, that, whatever the censorious may in-
sinuate to the contrary, the almost identical
periods and idioms at and in which these two pro-
posals were promulgated, do not by any means
demonstrate a previous concert on the part of
these prudent consorts, touching the point in
question. Not that I take upon me to deny, any
more than to asseverate, said concert between said
consorts. I leave the point to be settled between the
future commentators on these immortal epistles.

'

the family quartett sat looking at each other
just after dinner, opposite the four points of the

GRIMM'S GHOST. 147

flowery compass impressed in centre of the
newly calendered blue baize cover of the cushion-

shaped dining-table—'' Railly, }

think the young people ought to see some'at of
foreign parts now. Not but what Margate is
monstrous genteel, and frequented by the rail tip-
toppers of Trinity Square and the Crescent —
especially since the steamers have run so re-
gular and cheap. But then, you know, one
does'nt see any of the continent at Margate —
and I'm sure it must be a fine sight, from what
Captain Thackery said about it the other day —
though I cou'dn't very well make out what it was
like. I'm told, too, it's to be seen just as well
at Bullen as if you went all the way to Jamaica
to look at it. Now what do you say, my love, to
taking us all over for a week or ten days ? I've
heard it's only like crossing over the way, in a
manner speaking. Now I think of it, too, I
shou'dn't wonder a bit if our next door neighbours
would like to jine us — and that would make it
come quite easy, you know — for then we could
all be together, and have our meals under one.
Besides, — I railly do think the young folks ought
to see some'at of foreign ways. Why there's

L 2

148 REJECTED ARTICLES.

them Hincks's gals have been to Rome, and Italy,
and the Rhine, and" —

The elder Culpepper's patience, which was
generally quite exemplary under the infliction of
an apparently interminable harangue of this
nature, would probably have stood him in stead
some time longer. But his love of a joke (pro-
vided he himself was the ostensible projector of
it) was not so easily to be kept under ; and ac-
cordingly, this mention of the Rhine roused him
from his chin-on-elbow-supported attitude, in a
moment.

" The Rind /" reiterated he with a good-
humoured chuckle—" ha ! ha ! the Rind ! they
need'nt go far to see that. They've only to step
into our friend Dixon's shop in Fenchurch Street,
and they may see plenty of the Rind, and smell
it too, for that matter." *

There are certain kinds of puns the mere
odour of which, like that of " the morning air"
to the ghost of Hamlet's father, is potent enough
to drive a disembodied spirit like myself out of
the room in which they are engendered. And

* I hope I need not recall to the reader's recollection
that Mr. Andrew Dixon is the senior partner in an emi-
nent cheesemongering concern in Fenchurch-street.

GRIMM'S GHOST. 149

this of Old Culpepper's was one of them. I am
therefore not able to report by what more co-
gent arguments than those urged above, the
ladies respectively of Messrs. Culpepper and
Dixon prevailed upon their lords not only to
allow of, but partake in, the projected excursion
to " Bullen." But that they did so prevail will
scarcely be considered as problematical, when I
aver that the Friday following saw the whole
party of eight duly installed on the deck of the
Superb, steaming away down the river, to their
hearts' content.

Having, in my present state of being, a mortal
or rather an immortal antipathy to anything in
the shape of smoke, the reader will not be sur-
prised to learn that I declined accompanying our
travellers any farther than to see them safe off
from the Tower stairs. I must therefore consign
to another pen the task of communicating the
events consequent on the voyage.

MISS CLARA CULPEPPER TO HER FRIEND MISS BELINA
BINKS OF BUCKLERSBURY.

Boulogne, Friday Evening, Sept. 1825.
Well, my love! here we are in France, sure
enough ! but after such a voyage I — oh my dear,
the ocean is a frightful beast to be tossed about

150 REJECTED ARTICLES.

upon the back of, I do assure you. It was all
very well at first. Just for all the world like
going to Margate, only the company was far
genteeler. But after we had made as nice a
little pic-nic dinner as could be, off the con-
tents of our hamper, and were just thinking of
having a comfortable cup of tea — oh, my dear!
the wind began to blow — (a " breeze," they called
it — a pretty breeze it kicked up among all of us,
sure enough!) — the sea began to swell up every
here and there, just as it does in the last scene
of Paul and Virginia, only worse if anything —
and all in a moment I began to be so sick, and
so frightened, and Pa was so cross about having
consented to come, and Ma was so angry with Ned
and me for having persuaded her to persuade him,
and Ned, (who did'nt seem to mind it a bit,) was
50 provoking, and everything was so disagreeable,
that I can't bear even to think of it now it's all
over j so I shall only say that the nasty sea water
has quite annihilated my sweet green spencer, and
turned Ma's crimson pelisse all over as black as
the chimney, and run away with Pa's hat, and
what's most provoking of all, has got into the box
that held all Ma's and my pretty lisse caps arid
frills, and washed them all up into a little dirty
bundle in one corner.

GRIMM'S GHOST. 151

This is all I can tell you to-night, my love ;
for Ma is so cross about the caps and frills that
she says I sha'nt sit up a minute longer. But
to-morrow I mean to take up my pen again, and
then I've got such things to tell you ! Oh, my
dear Bel, you can't imagine what very odd things
happened to us when we first got here. But Ma
won't let me scribble, as she calls it, any longer
— so good night.

Saturday Morning.

Well, my love — I feel quite recovered from the
fatigues and disasters of yesterday — and I ex-
pect to pass the charmingest day, and I'm so de-
lighted with France — at least I think I shall be

O

— and — but I must tell you about our landing
first, for I don't think we shall meet with
anything so odd as that, if we stay here till
Christmas.

When we got opposite the Porte of Boulogne^-
(Fm sorry to say I can't tell you anything that
happened till then, I was so shocking ill) — but
when we got to the Porte — (By the bye, I wonder,
my dear, what they can mean by calling it the Porte
of Boulogne. Porte, you know, means door, in
French — and there's not a bit of a door, or any-
thing of the sort — it all lays as open as Black-

152 REJECTED ARTICLES.

heath — but, now I think of it, captains of ships,
and such kind of persons, can't be expected to
understand French) — however, when, as I was
saying, we got opposite Boulogne, what do you
think the odious captain did ? He made a dead
stop at about a quarter of a mile from the town,
and pretended he could'nt get in — that there
was'nt room, or water enough, or some such non-
sensical excuse ! Why, he must have thought us
all fools, I suppose, or blind — for there was oceans
of water — you could hardly see anything else — and
as for room, there was enough for fifty ships as
big as his to have gone in side by side. Ned said
it was " a regular take in" — but Pa said he did'nt
see how it could be a " take in" — that if they
would but take us in, it was all we wanted — but.
as far as he could see they seemed determined on
keeping us out. However, when they found that
we would not get out into the nasty little ships
that came from the town to fetch us, and that
looked, as Mr. Dixon said, like great empty but-
ter casks cut down the middle, and a scaffold
pole stuck up in them with a dirty sheet tied to
it, — they at last took us into the harbour.

By the bye, calling this place the harbour
was the first thing that set Ma off about the in-
feriorness of the French to us. She said if they

GRIMM'S GHOST. 153

did'nt know what a harbour was, better than that,
it was a pity somebody did'nt learn them — for
it was no more like the one in which she had so
often took tea at the bottom of Mr. Mince's
garden in Camberwell Grove, than nothing at all.

By this time you must suppose us got close
up to the side of the water, just as it might be
at Billingsgate, only nothing like it at all, but
quite different. Here we were met by a string
of people who had been following by the side of
us for ever so far, and making such frightful and
outlandish noises that I was actually afraid to
look up and see what it was all about. But
when we stopped close to the side, and I did look
up — la ! my love, it was really quite shocking, I
do assure you, besides its being by no means
what Ma calls proper. Do you know there was
I dare say a dozen women, some dragging at the
ropes that were tied to our ship, and others
squabbling and squalling at each other, about who
should be the first to lift into the ship a huge
staircase, on which we were to climb up. And
all this while there was a whole lot of big sailor-
looking men, lolling about doing nothing, and never
offering to help them !

But this was nothing, my love, to the state of
these poor women's dress, or rather their undress.

154 REJECTED ARTICLES.

Do you know they had on neither bonnets, nor
gowns, nor — in short, my dear, they did not
seem to me to have anything on but their stays
and under petticoats — and they actually reached
up to their knees ! I declare I did not not know
what to do, or which way to look, especially when
I saw Ned and George Dixon whispering and
smiling to each other, and then casting impudent
leers at Miss Dixon and me.

It was night, to be sure, though it was quite
a fine moonlight. If it had been in the day
time I'm sure I don't know what I should have
done. Though, I've been thinking since, that
the reason of this very unpleasant circumstance
was, that the poor creatures, not expecting our
arrival, had gone to bed, and were called up in
such a hurry that they had not time to put their
things on.

Well — after a deal of fuss and to do, we landed
at last ; and when we had got ourselves all to-
gether, two and two, under the directions of Pa,
and were going to march off towards the Inn
which had been recommended to us by a very
polite French gentleman in the crowd, as " dee
onlee good for genteelfolks/' and he was even so
kind as to offer to shew us the way to it himself,
which Pa said was doing the civil thing in a

GRIMM'S GHOST. 155

way he did'nt expect to meet with in a foreign
country — I say, j ust as we were going to set off,
what do you think ? We found that some French
fellows, with great cocked hats like the lord
mayor's footmen, and great swords by their sides,
had actually drawn an enormous chain all round
us, to prevent our getting away — and they
would'nt let a soul of us pass !

La ! my love, you can't think how frightened
I was — though I did'nt say anything. And as for
Ma — she was ready to drop. And well she
might, for she told us afterwards she thought
that a war had broke out between us and the
French since the morning, and that they had
let us come into their nasty town on purpose to
make prisoners of war of all of us.

But we soon found that they only did this out
of civility, to keep us together till all were landed,
that we might then go the Custom House and
show our tickets — for do you know Pa was obliged
to make interest with a great French lord in
London before we came away, to get tickets for
Till of us — (passports they call them in French) — or
else they would not have let us in. And I think
this is very proper — for you know if it was not
for this anybody might come, and then how could
one expect the company to be so select as it

156 REJECTED ARTICLES.

is ? Well — when everybody was out of the ship,
they let down a bit of the great chain that kept Us
together, and away we all marched, two and two,
to the Custom House, to give in our tickets, and
then to the Inn, attended all the way by the civil
French gentleman I told you of before, who we
heard afterwards was no less a person than a Com-
missioner— though Pa said he could not find out
whether he was a Commissioner of the Customs,
or the Excise.

I think, by the bye, Pa might have asked him
to dinner, for he was uncommon civil and at-
tentive, to be sure. And he spoke very good
English, too, considering he was only a French-
man.

And now good bye, my dear Bel, for a day or
two; for I have neither time nor room to tell
you any more at present. And I'm afraid this
is so crossed and crossed that you will not be able
to make it out. Adieu.

Your devoted friend

C. C.

P. S. I must find a little corner to tell you
that young Dixon (Dixoirs a nasty name — is'nt
it? — not half so genteel as Culpepper) — but he
has been vastly attentive. And if it was'nt for
the recollections of the handsome and interest-

GRIMM'S GHOST. 157

ing Captain Augustus Thackery (that is some-
thing like a name !) — I — but I can't squeeze in
a word more.

•

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.

Boulogne, Saturday Evening.

OH ! my dear Bel ! Something so interesting
has happened. It's quite like one of Miss
What's- her-name's novels. You know I was
telling you in my last letter that that foolish
chap George Dixon had been pestering me with
his " attentions," as he calls them ; and I told
you too, or at least I should, if I had had room,
how I hate and detest his awkward attempts at
what Ned calls " doing the polite." I believe
too that a word or two escaped me, on that one
soft secret of my susceptible heart, which has
been confided to your sympathetic bosom alone.

Well, my love, would you believe it? Who
should we meet here, the very first person on
going out this morning to look about us in the
town, but the Captain himself! But I must
begin where I left off, and tell it you all regular,
or else I shall never overtake myself, for you know
I promised to tell you all that happened to us.

You may suppose we were all too tired and
too ill on the night of our arrival, to make many

158 REJECTED ARTICLES.

very particular observations on the manners and
customs of the French people. But as soon as
ever I got up in the morning I determined to
begin — for I've often told you how itnised to pro-
voke me to sit and hear that conceited Miss
Christie, of Crutched Friars, tell a parcel of things
about France, and not be able to contradict any-
thing she said. So as soon as ever I had written
my letter to you, I began to put everything "down
in a nice little note-book I made Pa buy me
before we came away — especially as I promised
him I would do everything in the world to im-
prove my mind, if he would but bring us here.
Besides — the captain is so clever and accomplish-
ed, that if — but this is not what I was going to say.
Sarah Dixon and I slept in the same room —
for you know I should have been terrified out of
my life to sleep in a room by myself in a foreign
country. Well — about nine o'clock the Captain
— no — I mean Ned knocked at our door, and
bid us make haste down, for the Captain — no
—I mean the breakfast was ready, and Pa was
waiting — and that — la ! my love — I really cannot
stay to tell you all these uninteresting things,
which happened just as they might have done
at Margate or at home. I can tell you all these,
you know, when we meet — especially as I'm sure

GRIMM'S GHOST. 159

you must be dying to know how it all happened
about the Captain, and how he looks, and what
he said, and every thing. So I shall merely say
that we had. a nice breakfast of regular English
tea and eggs, dry toast, and twists, and a nice
little plate of beef— just as it might have been at
Dandelion — (I knew it was all stories that Miss
Christie was telling, about the strangeness of the
French customs, and about their eating dinners
for breakfast) — and then we all went and dressed
to go out.

Sarah Dixon would put on that odious frock of
her's, with the great staring crimson stripe on- the
green ground, which you know we both agreed she
looks so very vulgar in. But I did not say anything
to her about ;t, for she will have her own way.

I'll tell you exactly how I was dressed — and
I must say I thought I never looked neater. I
had on a riew morning frock that Pa bought me
just before we came away. The sweetest thing !
— so new, and 50 genteel, and so French — and
made so pretty a la blouse as the French call it.
I got Ma to let me have it made at the west
end — in Sydney's Alley. It's the sweetest pattern
you ever saw — a crimson and blue stripe shaded
off somehow into nothing, just like a rainbow
upon a primrose ground — and then a sort of zig-

160 REJECTED ARTICLES.

zag running all over it — for all the world like
thunder and lightning. It comes high up at the
throat — and has five broad tucks made the cross
Way — and I've got the sweetest scarlet leather
cincture for it, with a steel buckle to buckle on
the left side. I wore nothing over it but a green
silk half handkerchief buckled into the band be-
hind and before — for you know I told you the
nasty sea water annihilated all our frills, and I
did'nt like to be beholden to Sarah Dixon for one
— especially as her's are all so odiously ugly.

I had on my head my pretty little pink silk
cottage bonnet — that one, you know, that every
body says I look so nice in — that only just comes
even with my face, and shews my profile — that
everybody says — I mean that the Captain said
yesterday — I mean — la ! my dear — what do I
mean? — How very confused I do get. I was go-
ing to say that under the bonnet I wore that
sweet little lace cap that I "bought that morn-
ing at the Bazaar when you were with me — don't
you remember? And under that I wore the
sweetest pair of rose-buds stuck one just over
each temple. And then, you know, all my nice
corkskrew curls that I had kept in papers for
two whole days on purpose. You know every
body says what nice hair I have, and how nice

GRIMM'S GHOST. 161

I do it — and as for the Captain — Assays — but stay
— I'm not come to him yet.

Well, my dear, I've now told you exactly how
I was dressed, except that I had on my nankeen
boots which lace up inside, and fit me so delight-
fully that I can hardly walk in them. As for Pa
and Ma, and old Mr.- and Mrs. Dixon, I can't
stay to tell you how they were dressed, except
that Pa will keep wearing those nasty gaiters
that he bought in Cranbourne Alley, and that I
believe he wears on purpose that he may have to
tell everybody they are alley gaiters* — though
why they laugh when he tells them so; I never
could make out, or why, if it's such a laughing
matter, he should be so fond of telling it.

But la ! my dear — I shall fill my paper again,
without getting to the dear Captain. As I was
saying, we all got ready to go out immediately
after breakfast, and at last out we sallied, two
and two in a string — Pa and Ma and Mr. and
Mrs. Dixon walking together by themselves, and
we young ones following — though Ned would
not walk with me as I wanted him, but would
make me take hold of that foolish George Dixori's
arm, though he knows very well how I hate him,
and how provoked I should be if the Captain — I

* Qy. alligators,- — Printer's Devil..

M

162 REJECTED ARTICLES.

mean how provoked I was when the Captain — in
short, my dear, we had hardly walked half the
length of the street in which the inn is, and were
all standing still in a row looking up at the beauti-
fullest picture you ever saw, which is oddly enough
stuck up outside the house instead of inside, and
which Pa says he asked a gentleman that he met
at the inn since, how it came to be hung outside
the house, and what it was a picture of — and the
gentleman said it was a sign — and Pa said a sign
of what ? and the gentleman smiled, and said it
was a sign that the French artists are the best sign
painters in the world, and — but where was I —
oh — we were all standing still, looking up at this
beautiful picture — when who should I see pass by
us but Captain Augustus Thackery himself! I
knew him in a moment — though he has had almost
all his beautiful whiskers cut off, and had on
only a common blue coat, and white pantaloons,
and did'nt look like a captain at all.

La ! my dear, you might have knocked me
down with a feather. My heart did beat so,
you can't think. Meeting him, you know, under
such very romantic circumstances — in a foreign
country — and so unexpectedly— and I hold of that
nasty George Dixon's arm too — and every thing.

I declare I did'nt know what to do. How-

GRIMM'S GHOST. 163

ever, I had plenty of time to recover myself —
for though the Captain looked full at us all as
he passed — at least at me and Sarah Dixon —
and turned round to look at us after he got by —
yet he did'nt know us a bit, no more than if he
had never seen us. I think I told you he wears
a beautiful quizzing glass — which accounts for
his not seeing us. Well — on he passed without
ever seeing us, though he looked at us all the
time. And to tell you the truth, Pm not sorry
for it now — though I was monstrously disappointed
at the time — for if he had seen us, and come up
and spoke to us, I declare I do think I should
have dropped. You see, my dear Bel, I have
filled my paper cram full again, without getting
to the end — or rather hardly to the beginning — of
our adventure with the Captain. But to-morrow
I mean to devote a whole sheet to nothing else —
about how we met him again the same evening
when I was walking alone with George Dixon —
and how he did see us then the moment he came
near us — and how he came up to me and took
hold of my hand — and how — in short, every thing
about it. So adieu till to-morrow dear Bel.
Ever your devoted friend,
C. C.

M 2

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE,

W4LLIAM HAZLITT.

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. *

WILLIAM HAZLITT.

WE are going to perform a novel undertaking.
It is, to speak the truth of William Hazlitt. This
writer has been praised more than he deserves;
and yet not enough. And he has been abused
more than he or than any man deserves ; and yet
his faults have never been pointed out. In short,

* This paper was for obvious reasons " rejected" from a late
publication, entitled The Spirit of the Age ; and it was, I suppose
for the same reasons, refused admission into the amusing periodi-
cal in which a portion of that work had previously appeared.
I feel peculiar satisfaction in being able to present this paper to
the public ; — first, because it is more than probable that, but for
this particular medium, it would never have seen the light at all ;
and secondly, because there can be no doubt whatever, in regard
to the person whose portrait is here drawn, that, as " none but
himself can be his parallel," so none but himself either can or dare
give a true account of him. — Editor.

168 REJECTED ARTICLES.

he has been praised and abused through thick and
thin ; but he has never yet been estimated.
He shall be so now, as nearly as we are able to
do it.

We have had some doubts about placing Mr.
Hazlitt's portrait among those whose intellects
make up "The Spirit of the Age;" because strict-
ly speaking none are entitled to that rank who
have not positively and directly contributed to
create that spirit, or are pretty sure sooner or later
to do so : and Mr. Hazlitt neither has nor ever
will. But we could not persuade ourselves to
exclude him from a company of which wTe have
thought JeofTry Crayon, and two or three others
who shall be equally nameless, not unworthy to
come among the number.

If a better reason than the above is desired, all
we have to give is, that if Mr. Hazlitt has not set
his mark upon the Age in which he lives, it is his
own fault. He might have done it if he would, and
in signs and characters that those who run might
read. It is a sufficient misfortune to his Age and
to himself that he has not done so, and will
not, without its being made an excuse for de-
priving our readers of a portrait that they will
probably look for with some curiosity, if it is only
in expectation of the abuse that they have so long

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 169

been accustomed to see connected with his name ;
Mr. Hazlitt being for the most part known only
through the medium of the Quarterly Review
and Blackwood's Magazine. And by the bye, that
abuse itself, reaching us through the above-named
mediums, may be offered as tolerably conclusive
collateral evidence that we are not doing any great
wrong in placing Mr. Hazlitt's name in our list ;
for the person whom those publications " delight
to dishonour," may be safely pronounced to be no
insignificant one at least. But let us " leave this
face-making, and begin."

No writer ever acquired marked distinction in
his day, of whose writings something might not be
said, either in relation to kind or to degree, which
could not be said of any others whatever. And
perhaps this is the best criterion that can be
given, to determine who is and who is not entitled
to rank among the Spirits of the Age in which he
lives. In regard to Mr. Hazlitt's writings, this
one distinguishing quality is the unrivalled power
which they display of looking into the hidden
truth of things. He pierces the depths of human
life, and " plucks out the heart of their mystery."
His pen is like Ithuriel's spear; whatever it touches
starts up before us in its naked truth. If you are

170 REJECTED ARTICLES.

afraid to hear the truth you must not listen to
him ; for it will out, whatever may be the conse-
quences. And this even when the truth in ques-
tion is a personal one. But when it is an abstract
truth that he happens to hit upon, " away at once
with love and jealousy !" out it must come, even
though it should blacken his dearest friend or
brighten his bitterest foe ; for the truth is to him
— the truth .

Perhaps it may be said that the leading feature
of Mr. Hazlitt's mind — that which constitutes its
great strength as well as its great weakness — is
this passion which he cherishes, to the exclusion
of all others, for abstract truth; for his other
passion, for Liberty, is but a branch or off-set of
this. He would not scruple, upon occasion, to
tell a lie, out of pure love for the truth ! just as he
would assist in making himself and everybody
else slaves in practice, out of his love for Liberty in
the abstract. This may seem paradoxical, but it
is capable of an easy explanation. He has a
catholic zeal for the truth'; and though he would
not die a martyr to it in a bodily sense, (for we
venture to guess that he is constitutionally timid
in regard to bodily suffering), yet he would not
scruple to sacrifice his principles to it, and his

THE SPIRTT OF THE AGE. 171

sense of practical justice : just1 as a lover is
always fonder of his passion than of his mistress,
and would at any time sacrifice the latter to the
former.

A consequence of Mr. Hazlitt's indestructible
passion for abstract truth is, the absolutely un-
changeable nature of all his opinions. With
him a thing either is, or is not; and there is
no disputing about it. He would even interpret
literally the old axiom, De gustibus non est dis-
putandum, and insist that a man either has a taste
for truth and beauty, or he has it not ; and that
he who prefers falsehood and deformity, or even
the lesser degree of beauty to the greater, does so
not because he sees with- another eye, but because
he does not see at all ; not because his faculties
are different, but because they are defective. If you
tell him, for example, that you prefer a picture of
Correggio's to one of Raphael's, he will not let you
off in virtue of the above maxim ; though he is
too modest a man to be the first to dispute the
point wifeh you. But if you are imprudent
enough to insist on " giving a reason for the faith
that is in you," then the chances are that he will
not only prove but proclaim you a fool for your
pains.

172 REJECTED ARTICLES.

It has been said of Cobbett, that he has not
one Mrs. Cobbett among all his opinions. It
may in the same manner be said of Hazlitt, that
he has no one opinion which is not a Mrs. Hazlitt.
He was wedded to every one of them in his youth,
and he has stuck to them ever since, " through
good report and through evil report." Not but
what we believe he would be very glad to be di-
vorced from some of them a mensa et thoro ; for
if we may judge from some parts of his writings,
they lead him a sad life between-them ; particu-
larly those of them that trouble their heads about
Politics. But it is no easy matter to make up
one's mind to part for ever from a wife that one
loves, however ill she may treat us, or whatever
we may be forced to suffer through her follies or
extravagancies. And perhaps the more wives a
man has, the less inducement he feels for getting
rid of any one that he may be suffering by. In
Turkey, where a man may have as many as he
pleases, the law of divorce is a dead letter.

But besides these considerations, Mr. Hazlitt
has a conscience, touching his intellectual ties,
however he may feel himself too poor to afford to
keep one in other matters. He took his opinions
" for better for worse ;" and he cannot now per-

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 173

suade himself to kick them out of doors merely
because with their youth they may have lost some
of their pristine freshness and beauty. One thing
we will say in his favour on this head ; (and it
even makes up for all the faults that have been
imputed to him, much more for those which
he actually possesses) : it is this — if some of the
opinions to which he is wedded have long been
" the plague of his life," and he would fain
have been without them in an honest way,
he has never yet been base enough to connive
at their prostituting themselves, in order that
he might make that an excuse for getting quit of
them!

To escape at once from this long-winded meta-
phor,— Mr. Hazlitt commenced his career as a
thinker, (though not as an author), at that period
which produced several more of the most distin-
guished writers of the day. He was, at the
breaking out of the French Revolution, one of
a band of youthful enthusiasts, who implicitly
believed in all the moral truth and beauty which
that event held forth the hopes of, and who were
all acted upon by it in an equal degree, though all
in a different manner. We allude, besides Mr.
Hazlitt, to his then friends, Messrs. Wordsworth,

174 REJECTED ARTICLES.

Coleridge, Southey, and Dr. Stoddart. This
associated band of intellectual brothers included
a few more names ; but these are the only ones
which have since become distingushed.

Upon Mr. Wordsworth this event acted but as
a confirmation of his preconceived notions touch-
ing the nature and destiny of man. If Mr. Words-
worth is the most philosophical of poets, or the
most poetical of philosophers, (which you will),
he is even more of a philosopher than a poet.
This event, therefore, was for him only a natural
and necessary corollary from the premises to which
he had early made up his mind ; and it moved
him no jot from " the even tenor of his way/' He
wrote ballads, then, about Alice Fells and Idiot.
Boys, just as he writes them about Peter Bells
and Waggoners, now, that all his bright hopes have
blasted in the bud by the pestiferous breath of
the hag Legitimacy, which he and his friends in
.their mistaken humanity helped to escape with
her life, instead of, as they ought, treading her
black blood and rotten bones into the soil which
she had so long polluted, or burning them in a
great auto da fc on the altar of human liberty,
and scattering their ashes to the four winds of
heaven, amid shouts of holy exultation that the

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 175

angels themselves might have listened to on their
thrones of light.

But Mr. Wordsworth is a philanthropist as
well as a philosopher ; and we must not wonder,
therefore, if he was willing to connive at sparing
the lives of half a dozen kings; though his boast-
ed philosophy might have taught him that it must
be done at the cost of those of millions upon
millions of their subjects ; to say nothing of that
of Liberty herself — which is worth them all !

The personal consequences to Mr. Wordsworth
have been exactly what they ought : — he is patro-
nized by Lord Lonsdale, praised by Mr. Gifford,
and paid out of the pockets of the people !

On Mr. Coleridge the effects of the French
Revolution and its failure were as different as the
different nature of the two minds on which they
were to operate. Mr. Coleridge lives but in dreams
of poetry, and mystic revelations from other worlds ;
and this event promised to be the parent of such
dreams and revelations as had not till then visited
the mind of man. What then could he do,
when all these " gorgeous palaces " of our intellec-
tual pride, these " solemn temples" of our human
hopes and affections, were either levelled with the
dust and their golden images broken in pieces and

176 REJECTED ARTICLES.

trodden under foot, or (still worse) turned into
marts for money-changers and dens for thieves ;
and when all the fairy fabric had melted away (as it
soon afterwards did) " like breath into the wind ;"
what, we say, could Mr. Coleridge be expected to
do under such circumstances, but " wink, and
shut his apprehension up" for a brief space, and
then sink into that listless state, between sleeping
and waking, in which he has remained ever since ?

And yet Coleridge was the wisest of the set,
after all ; or at any rate he was the happiest ;
which is much the same thing. Until the French
Revolution came, he knew of nothing better in
the world than his own talk about his own fancies j
and when it ceased to exist it left him just where
it found him. He had donanothing but talk before ;
(and how could he do better, considering what his
talk is ?) and he has done nothing else since.
And the only difference its failure has made to
him is, that he has one more subject to talk about :
which indeed he would if it had succeeded j so
that to him it has made no difference at all.

Alas ! not so to Mr. Southey. The breaking
out of the French Revolution found him " a poet,"
in the purest and loftiest sense of that pure and
lofty title. And its failure has left him — a Poet-

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 177

laureat ! Ill betide those who caused that failure,
if for nothing but for this alone ! The French
Revolution came upon Mr. Southey like a flash of
lightning breaking over a traveller in sight of a
nobly extended prospect at midnight • not only
revealing for a moment to his half benighted
senses a thousand objects that he had not even
hoped to see, but decking them all in a beauty
not their own. Alas ! where is that prospect now !
" Whither is fled the glory and the dream ?"
No wonder, when the sky closed again, and made
all by the contrast seem ten times darker than it
was before — no wonder that the author of Wat
Tyler and Joan of Arc should wilfully shut his
eyes upon the scene, and after wandering about
for a while amidst the dreary darkness, find him-
self at last walking up the steps of Carl ton Palace,
with a dress sword by his side, an opera hat under
his arm, and a copy of the Quarterly Review and
the Vision of Judgment sticking out of each poc-
ket of his cut velvet coat !

Foul befal those (we repeat it) who brought
about that bitter change ! " For all the other
changes which that fatal blow to the hopes of
human liberty brought with it, we could have
found " some drop of patience ;" because all

N

178 REJECTED ARTICLES.

the others, if they were not anticipated, might
have been.

" But there , where we had garnered up our hearts !
To be discarded thence —
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toryism
To knot and gender in !

Patience, thou young and rose-lipped cherubim,
Turn thy complexion there, ay, there look grim
As hell !"

But no more of this.

It is not worth while to inquire what were the
changes wrought on the then unknown, but
since notorious Dr. Stoddart, by the great event
we have alluded to ; for it is true (though Mr.
Croker has said it) that " once a Jacobin always
a Jacobin ;" and the Editor of the Old and New
Times was never anything better. He took up
the trade then because it gave him an opportunity
of indulging his natural disposition to blacken his
betters ; and he has laid it by for that of Editor
of a Tory newspaper, for the same reason. How this
person contrives to live at all, now that he who
was lately, even while bound to his barren rock,
" the foremost man of all this world," is laid in
his lowly grave, and no longer a butt for the

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 179

poisoned arrows of his filthy abuse, is more than
we can imagine. Probably he consoles himself
with the soothing reflection that he assisted in
sending him there.

So much for the effect of the French Revolution
on the early associates of Mr. Hazlitt. On him-
self it worked a change less noticeable than on his
friends, but more worthy of notice. It found him
still a youth, and his youthful faculties, however
prematurely developed in some respects, more
than proportionately backward in others. He was
a reasoner and a metaphysician even then • but he
was not then what he soon afterwards became —
a man of deep sensibility, of a most vigorous
and profound if not an excursive imagination,
and a fancy active and vivacious in the highest
degree.

The event in question promised to realize all the
conclusions, in regard to the fitness of things, and
their conformity with natural truth and justice,
which Mr. Hazlitt's logical understanding had at
that time enabled him to reach. And these pro-
mises so far exceeded any hopes that he could
have previously entertained, (for his temperament
is anything but sanguine,) that they must have
produced an instantaneous and an almost miracu-
lous effect, in developing those other faculties which

N 2

180 REJECTED ARTICLES.

we have ascribed to him, and which are usually
so seldom allied to extraordinary powers of reason-
ing. But, however this may be, those other facul-
ties were developed about this time ; the early
successes of the good cause urged them forward
in their course, and impelled them to a pitch of
almost diseased activity ; and then, in the midst
of all this tumult of irrepressible exultation at the
re-appearance of those hopes of human liberty
which had for so many ages been hidden in the
secret hearts of a few lone enthusiasts— in the
midst of this came crime, and bloodshed, and
shame j and then an instinctive combination of
all the bad of the earth against all the good ;
and at last the consequent triumph of the former,
as they always must triumph while the latter
refuse to avail themselves of the same ways and
the same weapons. If the people of the earth
had felt no more remorse at shedding drops of
blood than its kings did and do at shedding oceans,
all would -have been well, and that people would not
have seen their own blood poured forth like water,
and their miseries laughed to scorn. As it is, they
have more than half deserved their fate.

But what must have beeri the effect of all this
on a mind like Mr. Hazlitt's ? We must not
dwell upon the picture. Suffice it to say, that

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 181

" He, repulsed, (a short tale to make)
Fell into a sadness — then into a fast —
Thence into a watch — then into a weakness —
Thence to a lightness ; and by this declension
Into the madness wherein he (sometimes) raves
And we all mourn for."

But let us not forget to mention one thing. Ta
Mr. Hazlitt's eternal honour be it spoken, whatever
else the failure of all his hopes and aspirations made
of him, it did not make him an apostate. And
which of his early friends, " all honourable men" as
they are, can say as much ? Because those hopes
were blasted in their bloom, and lost the odouv of
their sweetness, he did not turn round upon them
with a feigned contempt, and after " casting them
like loathsome weeds away," fling himself at the
feet of the blasters. Because his arm was too
weak to overthrow the car of the great Juggernaut,
Legitimacy, he did not basely cast himself beneath
its blood-stained wheels — a willing sacrifice to the
object of his execrations. Because he found from
fatal experience that man was not made to be only
" a little lower than the angels," he did not lend a
helping hand to put harness on his back, and sink
him to a lower level than that of the brutes that
perish. In short, because Liberty, the betrothed
of his early hopes, the divinity of his youthful
adoration, proved false and " haggard," he did

182 REJECTED ARTICLES.

not " cast her off' to beggarly divorcement," and
thus prove that it was not her but himself he was
loving all the while ; but he clung to her more
closely the more she was deserted by others ; and
fallen and polluted as she is, has worshipped
her with a religious idolatry ever since. Let but
this one truth be written on his tomb-stone, and
with all his faults, (of which he has his full
share), his name shall be repeated with respect
when those of his ci-devant friends " stink in the
nostrils of posterity."

Those friends may say, perhaps, that he has
not been tempted like them, or like them he would
have fallen. But this is begging the question
with a vengeance ; or worse — it is stealing it. No
sophistry can annul the vital difference that exists
between them. It is a matter of bare fact, and it
stands simply thus : they abandoned the principles
on which they commenced their career, the mo-
ment it became dangerous and unprofitable to
hold them ; and he has held by them manfully to
the last. In a word, they are apostates, and
he is not.

But " something too much of this." It would
not have been introduced at all here, if the cir-
cumstances immediately connected with it had
not produced a marked effect on the intellectual

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 183

features of the person whose portrait we are at-
tempting to sketcrf. The French Revolution rose
like a beautiful meteor, only to dazzle the eye for
a moment, and then to set in blood ; and with it
set for ever the momentary hopes of our young
searcher after truth. And as their last rays re-
ceded from his eyes upon the distant horizon, and
he saw at the same time his early friends and
companions — men to whom he had looked up
with the most unfeigned reverence — falling down
in ignoble worship before the idols that were rising
from the earth in an opposite direction, a black
and baleful melancholy seemed to be settling within
his heart ; a cherished distrust in his fellow men
took possession of his imagination ; an indignant
scowl seated itself upon his magnificent brow,
(like a demon usurping the throne that was erect-
ed for a god) ; a pallid languor hung upon his
cheeks and lips, and dragged them downwards;
his shoulders became bowed and bent as if a
world of disappointments were resting and pressing
upon them ; and he went wandering about among
his fellow men, as he has done ever since, in loose
attire, a shambling gait, and a sinister look, the
very picture of a man possessed by a spirit of
mingled hatred and contempt for all the world,
and most of all for himself.

184 REJECTED ARTICLES.

This is a sorry picture to be obliged to draw, of
a man towards whom we feel as we do towards Mr.
Hazlitt. But we promised our readers the truth,
and it shall be told. And at any rate he will not
be the person to complain of it ; for, to say no-
thing of his being the most bold and reckless
truth-teller of the day, he has still one love left :—
his passion for truth is not yet extinguished, and
he will bear to hear it with equanimity even of
himself.

If it should be said that we have dwelt too long
on the merely personal part of our picture, we
could not help it. It is a theme that will have its
way, when it comes across us. We must endea-
vour to make up for our transgression in what
follows.

We have said that the most distinguishing fea-
ture of Mr. Hazlitt's mind, as displayed in his
writings, is its unrivalled power of piercing into
the truth. When there is nothing, either from
without or from within, to affect the natural
powers of his vision, perhaps, to use a vulgar
phrase, he " sees farther into the mill-stone" than
any man that ever lived. But on the other hand,
there is this to be said of him : he frequently sees
farther into it than its proper thickness • he sees
more than is to be seen.

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 185

We are willing to believe that this results, in
most cases, from his determination to say striking
things. He writes for his bread. (We need not
scruple to say here what we learn from those
writings themselves.) He writes for his bread ;
and therefore he must write what people will read.
If the subject on which he happens to be writing
is capable of a popular development consistently
with truth, well and good ; but it must have one
at all events. If he determines that half a dozen
brilliant things must be said on a given topic,
and only three present themselves naturally, three
more must be made. " Be brilliant," — is his
business maxim in these matters ; in conformity
with reason and common-sense if you can ; but —
be brilliant.

It is astonishing the mischievous effect this has

O

produced upon his writings ; and if nothing
should hereafter occur to induce him to care more
about his reputation than he at present seems to
do, or look better after it while he lives, when he
dies it will not be strong enough to take care of
itself. If the profound and subtle truths, and
the admirable illustrations and applications of
them, scattered about at random through half a
dozen of Mr. Hazlitt's volumes, had made their
appearance in a well-concocted form in one, that

186 II EJECTED ARTICLES.

one would have gone down to posterity, a monu-
ment of human penetration and wisdom scarcely
inferior in value to the Essays o'f Lord Bacon.
But as it is, the false coin and the true are so
completely intermixed, that common observers,
not being able to distinguish which is which, re-
fuse to take either : and after all, it is of common
observers that the posterity of every age is com-
posed.

If Mr. Hazlitt says that all this is his own
concern, and that if it pleases him to shew his
contempt for his readers and his reputation at
the same time, by pouring forth flashy falsehoods
and profound truths in a mingled stream, reck-
less of the effect of either, no man has a right to
say him nay ; — we admit the proposition. But in
return we require him to admit, without com-
plaining, the consequences of such foolish, not to
say wicked indifference. He would have us be-
lieve, and we do believe, that he loves Truth better
than anything else in the world ; indeed that he
cares about nothing else. And yet he treats her
with that cavalier indifference with which some
men treat their wives and mistresses, who would
yet be very indignant at having their love called
in question. " But we must tell Mr. Hazlitt that
in nine cases out of ten, those who treat the ob-

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 187

jects of their supposed love with indifference, ac-
tually feel it for them. And that even in the
tenth case (which we admit to be his) they do
not love them as they think they do, or as they
would have us think. Besides which, it is a
shrewd evidence of littleness of heart, not to
treat the betrothed of our affections as if we con-
sidered her worthy of them. The chastity of
Csesar's wife was not even to be suspected.
And so it must be with the love of those who
make Truth the object of their idolatry. She
will not have it even suspected that they bestow
upon her but half a heart ; and still less can she
bear to have it supposed that her only hated rival,
Falsehood, enjoys the other half.

There is another tiling which does great mis-
chief to Mr. Hazlitt's writings in their own day,
though it will not have much effect on them here-
after. He makes them the vehicles of his per-
sonal feelings in regard to living persons about
whom his living readers care but little, and about
whom posterity will neither know nor care one
farthing ; — he uses them as instruments of his re-
venge for supposed injuries, and gratitude for
supposed favours, received not in his character
of a writer, but a private man. If a person for

188 REJECTED ARTICLES.

whom he feels but a slender portion of respect
lends him a hundred pounds when he could have
little expected it, he proclaims him in his next
volume, " the prince of critics, and the king of
men." And if another, whom he perhaps does re-
spect, passes him in the street without seeing him,
he writes him down " a rascal" on the very first
opportunity that offers. If Mr. Hazlitt says, as
perhaps he may, that if self-preservation is the
first law of nature, gratitude and revenge are the
second and third, and that if you cannot have
them in one way, you must in another — we shall
not dispute it. All we say is, that such a mode
of achieving them leads him into the most ridi-
culous dilemmas ; besides taking away from his
writings that "'broad and general air" which
should belong to them, and making them

" cabinned, cribbed, confined,

Bound in to saucy doubts and fears.."

Mr. Hazlitt is one of those rare writers who
teacli you what, but for them, you never would have
known : and this we take to be the true criterion
of genius, in whatever department of human in-
quiry it may be found. Some of the moral truths

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 189

which he has stated and developed would have
remained for ever among the hidden secrets of
nature, if he had not lived to draw them forth.
We do not of course mean to state that it re-
quired a degree of mental power never attained
before, to enable him to produce certain portions
of his writings. What we mean is, that it re-
quired precisely that degree which is possessed by
him, added to his other qualities of sensibility,
excitability, &c. and that these together amount
to what we consent to call genius. Without any-
thing like this degree of mental power, he might
have been quite as lively, as brilliant, and as po-
pular a writer as he is ; and if we are obliged to
add quite as -useful, it is because he has chosen,
not absolutely to wmapply those powers, but to
leave them ?///applied. But still, without precisely
that degree of capacity possessed by him, and
unless that degree had amounted to genius, he
could not have done certain things that he has
done.

This leads us to state what is perhaps the most
distinguishing fact connected with Mr. Hazlitt as
a prose writer of the nineteenth century. He is
the only one of them all whose powers do amount
to genius : we mean, those who have addicted
themselves to prose exclusively ; for we are not

190 REJECTED ARTICLES.

aware that Mr. Hazlitt has ever written a line of
poetry, except in his prose.

By the bye, we take this to be a singular fact ;
though one that it would perhaps be not very
difficult to account for. Mr. Hazlitt has dis-
played as enthusiastic a passion for poetry, and
as acute a judgment and delicate a sensibility
in detecting its beauties, as any one of his co-
temporaries. There is a maxim, too, which
is pretty generally admitted, that " none but a
poet can criticise a poet." And yet Mr. Hazlitt
has never attempted a line of poetry himself.
The reason is this : he has never written poetry,
because he is able to think it, &i\d feel it, just as
well without writing it : for as to his writing
poetry, or any thing else, with a direct view to
any one's benefit but his owrn — that is entirely out
of the question with him ; partly from a selfish
indifference to the good of others, which has been
superinduced on his natural disposition by the
events of his early life ; but chiefly, we verily be-
lieve, from a shrewd suspicion, that if " a great
book is a great evil," a small one is only so much
the less evil. But however this may be, perhaps,
no poem was ever yet written that it might be
read. Poets write because their faculties require
the stimulus of composition, before they can reach

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 191

that state of excitement in which their being, as
poets, consists; — they sit down to write, not be-
cause they are poets at the moment, but in order
that they may become such. If it were not for
this, heaven knows, those who are not poets would
have little chance of enjoying any of those
feelings which poetry excites ; at least, so long
as the market price of poetry remains, generally
speaking, infinitely below that of prose, in pro-
portion to the time required for its production.
We conceive Mr. Hazlitt's imagination to be
so intense, his fancy so active, and his sensi-
bility so acute, that he sees poetry in every-
thing, and feels it at all times ; and therefore.,
he never writes it. Let any bookseller pay
him fifty guineas (beforehand !) for five hundred
lines of poetry, and see if he will not produce them.
But otherwise, why should he, when he can get
four times the sum for as many pages of prose
that would hardly cost him more time ? *

* We would wish our readers to take this speculation cum
grano sails, so far as regards those who have written poetry in
the present day. We will not pretend to state it as our belief
that all the vast mass of our cotemporary poetry was written
purely for the immediate pleasure of writing it ; and assuredly,
very little of it was written for the money that was to be made
by it. No doubt, the motive which produced the greater part of
it was triple — present pleasure, profit, and reputation. So far

192 REJECTED ARTICLES.

It is not generally known that Mr. Hazlitt stu-
died Painting for several years, and practised as
an artist ; and that he has executed some copies
from Titian which are looked upon by pretty good
judges as among the best that have ever been
done after that master — whom it is almost as diffi-
cult to copy as to rival. But though no one else
was dis-satisfied with the progress he made in
Painting, he himself was. He did not see why he
should be inferior to any man ; and when he found
that he was so, he threw up his pencil in disgust,
and has never touched it since.

He then came to London, and was engaged as
Parliamentary reporter for some of the daily

as relates to Mr. Haziitt himself our speculation rests on the
express understanding that his motive to write is profit alone.*
Not that he is careless about reputation. No man of fine genius
ever was. He is even greedy of it, and would enjoy no small
share if it could be had merely for the trouble of wishing for.
But he is utterly incapable of acting with a direct and immediate
view to its acquirement,

* If the reader should detect some little inconsistency between
this passage and another at p. 190, where the writer says that
the subject of his notice does not write poetry " because he
is able to think it and feel it just as well without writing it,"
he must not complain of me, at least, I am not editor enough
to pretend to make these articles better than I find them. Still
less do I offer a selection of the " beauties" of our popular prose
writers. I give the matter just as it comes to hand — adhering
with strictness even to the punctuation. — Editor.

THE SPIRIT OF THE A OE. 193

papers. From this laborious but useful drudgery
he was promoted to purveyor of theatrical critiques,
and other occasional paragraphs ; in which his
power of thought and of style soon shone out in a
manner not a little marvellous in the eyes of those
who had hitherto looked to the Morning Post for
their beau-ideal of such matters. There can be
little doubt that we owe almost entirely to him
the present tone of our theatrical criticism, — which
is not absolutely contemptible ; whereas, at the
time we speak of, it was infinitely below con-
tempt.

About the same time, too, or shortly after, he
began writing under the form of essays, in weekly
papers ; (chiefly, we believe, the Examiner) ; and
evinced a boldness and originality of thought, and
a spirit and vigour of style, that excited consider-
able attention among a certain class of readers,
but much less than they deserved generally, on ac-
count of an evidently careless, not to say insolent
disregard of the commonly received opinions of the
day, which accompanied almost all he put forth.
When an important truth occurred to him, he did
not, any more than he does now, tender it politely
for your examination, finically folded up in a
genteel wrapper of gentle phrases, as if he was

194 REJECTED ARTICLES.

afraid it might contaminate your touch ; but he
flung it in its simple nakedness, right in the face
of the most deep-rooted prejudice of the day,
or the most wide-spread interest ; and if those
whom it concerned did not like to pick it up, they
might leave it. When he was determined to
make war upon a well-bred lie, or a fashionably
attired sophistry, he did not send a friend to call
upon it, provided with a politely penned challenge,
written on hot-pressed and gilt-edged paper, and
sealed with his coat of arms ; but he flung his
mailed glove smack down before it wherever he
happened to meet it, and dared it once " to the
outrance."

Soon after this, Mr. Hazlitt was engaged to
give Lectures on English poetry, at the Surry In-
stitution, which were afterwards published in a
collected form. This brought him much more into
public notice than he had hitherto been ; though
in the literary world he had for some time past
been pretty generally looked upon as a person
of first-rate ability. But while it gained him
many admirers that he would not otherwise have
met with, by presenting his opinions in a tangible
and cognizable form, it placed him at the mercy of
those who have no mercy, much less justice, when

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 195

the paltry interests of their employers are threaten-
ed from the remotest distance With invasion, or
even with examination.

What followed is too well known to need re-
petition here. Mr. Hazlitt has ever since been
the butt and byeword of all the base hirelings of
the day ; from the editor of the Quarterly Review,
downwards, or upwards — which you will, — for
there is not a pin to choose between them, in lite-
rary rank any more than in moral respectability.
On every successive publication he has been as-
sailed by the mingled hootings and execrations of
those who have no other honours to bestow.

Let it not be supposed that we refer to this fact
under any affected feelings of pity or deprecation.
Mr. Hazlitt is among the last persons in the world
to claim exemption, when the lex talionis is the
order of the day — as it is at present ; for no one
ever stood less nice than he does about taking the
exact measurement of personal merit in a political
adversary, or of awarding precisely the deserved
number of blows to any unfortunate delinquent of
this sort who may happen to fall into his hands.
So far from it, he seems to think all fair in politics,
whatever he may in love ; and when he is in the
mood for it, would as soon call Mr. Wordsworth
a knave as he would Mr. Theodore Hook.

o 2

196 REJECTED ARTICLES.

We merely refer to the unmeasured abuse that
has been heaped on Mr. Hazlitt, as a striking sign
of the Spirit of the Age. We firmly believe, in-
deed, that he would have fallen into this error in
regard to others, in whatever age he had lived ;
because it is a vice of his blood, and he can no
more help it than he can help dashing his racket
or his head against the wall when he makes a bad
stroke at the Fives Court, or in fact than any of
us can help losing our temper when we do lose it.
In him, therefore, we can in some sort excuse it;
though we would on no account seek to exempt
him from the consequence which such a weakness
entails. But perhaps he is the only reckless
abuser of his day for whom this excuse (such as
it is) can be made. He vituperates the objects of
his political hatred in terms that they do not al-
ways deserve, because, when that hatred is stirred
up to its height, he neither knows nor cares for
the precise value of the terms he uses. But with
the systematic maligners of the day it is a very dif-
ferent matter. They do not even murder reputa-
tion with " malice prepense ;" for they have not
heart or gall enough to be " haters " at all, much
less such a " good hater " as he piques himself on
being. They commit their moral assassinations
as the Italian bravos do, — for hire ; and have no

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 197

more enmity to the person they seek to destroy,
than they have love to the cause or the party
they serve. With them it is an affair of pure cal-
culation, and they sit down to consider of it as
coolly as they would to a sum in arithmetic.
Will it pay to poison the public mind against such
or such a person ? Is he of sufficient importance
to make it prudent to do so ? Will the reprisals he
is likely to make leave a balance in favour of our
party ? These are the kind of questions they ask
themselves — or when not authorised to act on
their own judgment, their employers. And if the
answers are in the affirmative, they next proceed
to enquire into the actual character, both mental
and moral, of the person to be put down ; and
whatever that may be, regulate their attack ac-
cordingly. For example, if the peculiar charac-
teristics of his mind happen to be subtlety and
acuteness, they swear that he is an ass ; if he is
particularly remarkable for modesty and diffidence
of deportment, they write him up a bully and a
Bobadil ; if they should happen to learn (by means
of their spies) that he never drinks any thing but
water, they instantly offer to prove that he gets drunk
every morning upon gin and bitters, and every night
upon brandy-punch; and so of the rest. Nay, it
is not without example, when nothing else seemed

198 REJECTED ARTICLES.

likely to do, for them to throw out pretty broad
insinuations, the nature of which cannot even be
insinuated here !

But they have another method, which is a still
greater favourite with them than any of the
preceding, and not without reason, for it is in
some cases more effective than any other. It
consists in the artillery of nick-names. A nick-
name is at once irresistible and unanswerable.
It is a dab of moral mud thrown at a man. If
thrown skilfully it is sure to stiek, and if it sticks
it is sure to make the bearer of it look ridiculous.
If the first nobleman or the finest gentleman in
the land were to walk along London Streets with
a great dab of mud upon his cheek, the very
chimney-sweepers would laugh and " point the
finger " at him as he passed. And precisely so it
is with a nick-name. There is no gainsaying it.
It is worse than an " *7/-name ;" and those who
give it might as well swear away a man's life at
once, and have him hanged outright. And so they
would if they dared.

But these gentry are leading us farther from
our subject than it is either worth while or decent
to follow them. What we were about to say was,
that this kind of warfare is one of those signs
which mark the Spirit of the Age. Extremes meet ;

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 199

and we are now arrived at thai extreme pitch of
refinement which merges into barbarism. In
no other age would the kind of warfare we have
alluded to been tolerated ; and it is tolerated now,
only because

" We have given our hearts away — a sordid boon ;"

and are pretty much in that moral condition in
which men are before they have hearts to give.

Oh, it was not so once ! Alas ! whither are ye
fled, white years of youth ! Beautiful hopes of
opening life, why are ye changed to blank mis-
givings, and base suspicions, and coward fears,
and constant uncontrollable perturbations, that
prey upon the pierced spirit like canker-worms,
and will not let it rest ! It is but a little while,
and that spirit was wandering like a bird beside
the ever-sounding sea ; as pure as the air that
seemed to lift it from the earth ; as clear as the
waters over which it floated at will, or plunged
into their green depths in search of unimagined
wonders ; as free and unconfined as the space in
which it expatiated, or turned by a thought into
the temple of its triumphant worship ! What and
where is it now ? A denizen of that world which
it loathes, yet dares not leave; — a declaimer in
favour of that virtue it has forfeited and that sin-

200 REJECTED ARTICLES.

cerity it has flung away; — a sophisticator with
that truth which it still professes to idolize; —
and (oh shame of shames ! ) ready to truckle at
the footstool of that power which it would fain
see sunk into the central fires of the earth that
it outrages and pollutes !

We shall not detain our readers by any
lengthened details in regard to works now so well
known as the characters of Shakespeare's Plays,
the Lectures on the English Poets, and the Table
Talk. They are each " of a mingled yarn — good
and ill" — as what book is not ? each contains nu-
merous examples of all the faults that we have
attributed to this writer, and all his good qualities ;
and all are what they were perhaps intended to be
more than any thing else, — infinitely entertaining ;
and the last named — the two volumes of Table
Talk — are perhaps more so than any other volumes
of the day. For our own parts we would even go
the length of making no exception whatever to this
remark. We do not of course mean to assert that
people hurry through them with that eager interest
with which they devour the Scotch Novels ; or that
a tenth part so many persons look into them at all.
But those who do read them turn to them ten
times after the first perusal, for once that they
turn to the others. And to say nothing of their

THE SPIRIT OF. THE AGE. 201

readers being of the only class worthy that name,
they are nearly all buyers of them; which very
few are indeed of the novels, compared with the
enormous number that is sold. The chief consu-
mers of the latter are the circulating libraries, and
those numerous little lending shops which they
have created in every large town throughout the
kingdom. There are circulating libraries in Lon-
don that are obliged to have from fifty to seventy
copies of each novel when it comes out. And
those who actually buy them on their first ap-
pearance, merely to read, are chiefly those who
have plenty of money and little patience, and
therefore chuse to pay a guinea and a half for an
early perusal. And this includes the additional
advantage of being able to lend them to friend
after friend, till they are fairly lost, and you are
exempted from, the task of taking them up again !
for delightful as it is the first time, it is felt to be
a task afterwards.

But with the Table Talk it is different. The
real readers of the day are comparatively very
few. And of these every one is a buyer, to a
certain extent. There are a few books — one or
two in a season or so — that they must have.
Now if the little libraries of these real lovers of

202 REJECTED AllTICLES.

books were searched, with a view to ascertain the
comparative popularity of any given prose writer
of the day, we would venture odds that Mr.
Hazlitt would carry it hollow against them all.
And we would take odds that the Table Talk
would, like Roderick Random (was it not?) in
the ten Carlton-house lists of books supposed to
be the most entertaining in the English language,
be included in them all !

The reader will perceive that, according to this
calculation, (or speculation, if he pleases) the
popularity of a book is in an inverse ratio to its
sale ! But though as a general proposition this
would be ridiculously untrue, it is nothing less in
the particular instance in question. Nay — it may
be added — (and the rationale of the proposition
may be found in what has been said above) — that
if the Scotch Novels were read ten times as often
as they are by the same persons who now read
them, there would not be half so many of them
sold. So that the author of them must take
care what he is about, and not write them too
well, lest he should get more of the " empty
praise" of admiration in part payment of his de-
mands, and less of that " solid pudding" which
is evidently so much more palatable to him. Not

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 203

that he needs any hint of this kind from us.
Indeed he seems to have been acting on this feel-
ing of late, to a somewhat ominous extreme !

We have but little more to say of Mr. Hazlitt,
and his works. The most remarkable feature of
his style is, that there is no remarkable feature
belonging to it. He studiously avoids the use of
uncommon and obsolete words ; and never uses
a common word in an uncommon sense. But
perhaps it would be impossible to give a just
account of what his style would seem to aim at
being, without repeating, almost in so many words,
what he has himself said in describing his notion of
" The Familiar Style." We must therefore refer
the reader to that essay, in the second volume of
Table Talk. How far it is conformable with that
notion, is another question. In some particular
instances, and where he has taken pains to make
it so, (as for example in the Essay itself just re-
ferred to), we take it to be the very best specimen
of that style extant; and we agree with him in
thinking that style the best. But generally
speaking it falls short of what it aims at being ;
or rather it goes beyond. It is frequently so
idiomatical as to be quite enigmatical, to all but
those who are up to the slang of the last quarter

204 REJECTED ARTICLES.

of a century. It is sometimes so very " familiar'3
that it " breeds contempt." Its plainness often
borders on ugliness. In avoiding anything like
an oratorical construction, it is frequently broken
into bits. Its periods have no more words than
some writers have clauses. It is anything but
long-winded. It seems to be written for persons
afflicted with asthma. You may read it aloud
while smoking your cigar; puff and paragraph,
alternately. Not that we would recommend this
practice : for though not professors of it ourselves,
we should conceive that smoking, like painting,
requires the whole man.

We should venture to judge that if Mr.
Hazlitt's choice of the familiar style in the first
instance was the result of his naturally pure taste,
he has adhered to it so long on account of the
facilities it has afforded him ; for, as we before
hinted, he does not pretend to keep a conscience
in so purely a matter of business as authorship
now is with him. On the contrary, whatever
serves the turn of the moment is welcome.
Forced conceits and hacknied quotations ; paltry
points, staring paradoxes, and petty plays on
words ; scraps of Latin and French picked up
nobody or everybody knows where ; anthi theses,

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 205

alliterations, and any other helps and make-
weights, however unmeaning and meretricious,
(including the whole family of the Gingles) —
all are laid under contribution whenever they
present themselves. He is far from particular :
if " my lady" is not to be had, he is content with
" Joan." In short, in this respect, " nought is
for him too high, and nought too low."

Again — when he sets himself to make out a
case, if he cannot do it by fair means he will do
it by foul ; or he will frequently do whichever is
easiest, or whichever will tell best. And why
not ? He writes that you may " read ;" but not
that you may " mark, learn, and inwardly di-
gest." Or, putting it in another point of view, —
he cannot afford to give you more than a little of
the " le"aven" of wisdom to each " lump" (" abor-
tions" he has himself called them) that he pe-
riodically lays before you ; otherwise what is to
become of all those which he must produce
during the next twenty years ? But this does
not belong to style.

Mr. Hazlitt's metaphors, figures, and what are
usually considered as the higher parts of style,
frequently " come as tardy off" as his language
and construction. They are very seldom inapt;
but they run upon one, two, three, or four feet,

206 REJECTED ARTICLES.

as it may happen. And no wonder, considering the
distance from which some of them are fetched.

So much for the defects of Mr. Hazlitt's style.
Its merits must not be dwelt upon so long in pro-
portion, or the rest of the Spirit of the Age
" must halt for it.'' We will only say that when
he is in earnest in his endeavour to develop a
truth, or anxious in his attempt to disentangle a
difficulty, or unaffectedly impelled to pour forth
a burst of passion, or sincerely eager to impress
an opinion, or deeply interested in establishing a
theory or illustrating a theme, — there is no one
like him. Then his power of style is equal to his
power of thought and penetration, — which are un-
rivalled. Then he can shoot forth winged words
like arrows ; each following each to its desti-
nation, and no one impeding another. Then he
can link simile to simile, and place figure beside
figure, and pile metaphor upon metaphor, till
each illustrates each, and all melt into one mellow
whole, like the parts of a beautiful picture. Then
he can make fancy beget fancy, and draw imagi-
nation from imagination, and support truth against
truth, and multiply argument into argument, and
distil sentiment out of sentiment, — till there is
neither power nor will left in the reader to gainsay
or resist him. Tn short, then, and then only, he

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 207

is that really admirable expounder of truth, and
detector and destroyer of falsehood, which he might
always be if he pleased.

As we have mentioned the conversational powers
of some other of the subjects of our remarks, it
would scarcely be fair towards Mr. Hazlitt entirely
to pass over his. Perhaps if Mr. Coleridge is,
among professedly literary men, the best talker of
his day, Mr. Hazlitt is upon the whole the best
converser ; which is better — for it is calculated to
give more immediate pleasure to his fellow con-
versers than ever Mr. C.'s can to his hearers,
while it is pretty sure to be of more after benefit
to them. We. will venture to say of Mr. Hazlitt's
conversation, that it Includes every one of the good
qualities of his writings, and not one of their
faults. And the reasons are simply these : he is
fond of talking, whereas he hates writing; and
in talking, he is not called upon to say more than
he has to say, whereas in writing he frequently
is — having engaged to fill a certain space on
a certain topic. In short, he talks with per-
fect sincerity and good faith ; thinking what-
ever he says, and saying whatever he thinks. But
he writes, as it may happen : what he thinks, if he
thinks that will do ; if not, anything that will.

We must now take leave of Mr. Hazlitt, and

208 REJECTED ARTICLES.

abruptly, for we have long passed our limits. We
shall do so by saying, that whenever he pleases to
take the trouble, he may approve himself to all
the world, what two of the best judges in it have
already pronounced him — the best prose writer of
his day, and one of the finest spirits of his age
and country.^"

* Hear (if you can) Lord Holland's conversation; and see a
Letter of Mr. Charles Lamb to Mr. Southey, printed some time
ago in the London Mag-azine.

LONDON LETTERS

TO

COUNTRY COUSINS.

LONDON LETTERS

TO *

COUNTRY COUSINS.

No. 5.*

THE STREETS OF LONDON BY GAS-LIGHT.

I INTENDED, my dear Frank, (or rather, my dear
cousins conjointly — for this epistle is addressed to
all of you,) to have delayed offering you any gene-
ral sketches of London in 1825, till I had prepared
you for their due appreciation, by placing before
you a few more of its particular features. But as
I hear from authentic sources, that certain evil
disposed persons are, at this present writing, en-
gaged in laying a deep hatched and deadly plot,
against the very existence of what I had intended
should form one of the most characteristic and
attractive of my themes, I must pounce upon it

* Continued from New Monthly Magazine— p. 132 of the
Number for August, 1825.

p 2

212 REJECTED ARTICLES.

at once, before it passes into a thing that was ;—
seeing that it is the very essence of these agreeable
missives, to make you acquainted with nothing but
what actually is ; leaving what has been to those
who have been, and what is to be, to those who
are not.

You must know, that it has been the laudable
practice of the principal London linen-drapers,
and a few other retail tradesmen, time immemorial,
(that is to say for these ten years past,) to keep
open their shops till twelve o'clock at night, — for
the patriotic purpose, I suppose, of providing at
once a useful light for the footsteps of the
passengers through our evening streets, and a
pleasing delassement for their optics : not to men-
tion the advantages which these attractive exhibi-
tions offer to the interests of another very numerous
class of traders, whose primitive notions induce
them to carry on their operations in the open air :
I dare say as many pockets have been picked out-
side the lighted shops of London, as inside them.

There is also another highly useful and agree-
able result of this practice. I mean the keeping
at home till bed-time innumerable nuisances —
parallels to the critical calicots of Paris — who
would otherwise infest our minor theatres, and
give a too classical tone to their performances :

LONDON LETTERS. 213

for there is no one so fastidious in his tastes as your
fashionable shop-man.

But to the plot itself, — for with this anticipated
effect of it, I have at present little to do ; though it
may become a matter for serious speculation when
I make you acquainted with our theatres and
places of public amusement.

You are to understand, then, that it is in con-
templation to call a meeting of all the London
Linen-drapers, to take into consideration the pro-
priety of shutting up their shops at what they are
pleased to regard as a reasonable hour. As a
ground for which measure it is alleged, firstly,
that good housewives do not make a practice of
coming out to buy linnen-drapery, long after they
are gone to bed, and consequently, that the last
two or three hours involve a wasteful expenditure
of gas and good looks ; and secondly, that linen-
drapers' shop-men are men as well as their masters,
(more shame for the said masters ! they ought to
be women,) and that, " as such," they should be
allowed to partake in those needful recreations,
both of body and mind, which the arduous nature
of their occupations so obviously demand ; in other
words, that being employed all day long in the
labour of lounging over counters, setting forth the
merits of mull muslins, and expatiating on the

214 REJECTED ARTICLES.

pre-eminence of new patterns, they ought to be
let loose at night to recruit their exhausted powers,
both physical and intellectual, in those hospitals
for invalid health and morals, the Royal Saloon,
the Cyder Cellar, and the half-price pits of the
Adelphi, Coburg, and Surry theatres.

I shall not venture to conjecture how far the
plot in question may prove successful with re-
ference to the above object ; but this I will say,
that, even if it gains all it- seeks, the price paid for
it will be " a penny all too dear," — seeing that it
will go nigh to cost our metropolis that one pecu-
liar feature which distinguishes it favourably
above all other great cities whatever. If an in-
habitant of any other capital in the world, great
or small, were to be driven through the principal
streets of London for the first time, at nine o'clock
at night, even in the depth of winter, he would
enquire what grand fete was going on ; and when
you told him this was the every night aspect of
the place, he would give you credit, or perchance
J?'scredit, for practising upon him that only form of
joke with which he thinks we solemn English are
acquainted — namely, the hoax.

And this sole redeeming peculiarity in the in-
ternal economy of our Capital, we are to be de-
prived of at one blow — this single " Gaiety" in our

LONDON LETTERS, 215

huge volume of metropolitan " Gravities " we are
to see cut out before our faces — in order that cer-
tain slim apprentices and simpering shop-men
may have time to sip their tea at sixpenny coffee-
shops, and then proceed to recreate themselves
after the intellectual labours of the day, by utter-
ing enlightened critiques on the' merits of the last
new monkey-piece at the Surry, or espousing the
cause of some victim of managerial tyranny at the
Tottenham Court Road, or pronouncing profound
untruisms on the delicate distinctions which exist
between the tragedy of Mr. Huntly and Mr. Cob-
ham at the Coburg 1

The truth is, I suspect that the managers of
these major of the minors are the bottom of this
worse than gunpowder plot ; and as there is no
knowing what their influence may bring about,
when aided by all the eloquence of all the junior
Waithmans, (who are said to be at the top of.it,)
I have determined to lose no time in chaperoning
you through the gas-lighted streets of London,
while we can still find something in them to dis-
tinguish one from another : for pleasant as they
are when their shops are opened, and give to each
of them a distinct and noticeable character, — when
they are shut up, their total want of architectural

216 REJECTED ARTICLES.

merit makes it merely like walking through inter-
minable lines of gas-lighted brick-kilns.

We will, if you please, commence our perambu-
lation at a point which it is the more necessary
you should see now in imagination, inasmuch as
it is one which, I suspect, your somewhat exclu-
sive notions touching the limits of visitable locali-
ties will lead you to avoid when you come among

us. Lady M h alleges, — as an excuse for not

visiting her stately friend, the M ue, who dares

to live in Bedford Square, — that nothing can pre-
vail upon her horses to pass to the north of Oxford
Street. And I'm inclined to think your horses
will very soon acquire a similar distaste towards
certain quarters. This at least I am sure of, that
two or three of the families with whom you will
Jbe most intimate, will do their possible to per-
suade you of the absolute impracticability of Lud-
gate Hill, beyond that precise point occupied by
the far-famed emporium of Messrs Rundell and
Bridge, and will assure you that no instance ever
came within their experience of any known per-
son having penetrated farther.

The spot from wrhence we are to start, on our
evening tour in search of the London picturesque,
shall be that where the Poultry abuts upon Corn-

LONDON LETTERS. 217

hill; for even I, who am by no means fastidious
as to the particular latitude in which I let myself
be seen, will not pretend to have penetrated far-
ther towards the East Pole than the immediate
purlieus of this point, where the Prince of the
City gives his annual dinners. Not but I believe
the passage to be practicable ; and indeed I have
some thoughts of exploring it myself, as far as
certain points which have been discovered by
Grimm's Ghost, (of course you read the New
Monthly,) and by him denominated Crutched Friars
and Saint Mary Axe. And if I do so, I shall cer-
tainly imitate the example of our equally adven-
turous northern explorers, and affix new names to
certain noticeable spots. Indeed, I do not know
that I can do better than adopt the identical ones
chosen by those modern Colunibuses. If not quite
so flattering, they will be to the full as appropriate.
What, for instance, can be better than to call the
little narrow defile which flanks the great monu-
ment and mausoleum of our national wealth, the
Bank, Baring's Straits ; that spot about the
'Change where innumerable apple-women congre-
gate, Barrow's Point ; and that other, where the
losing gamesters of the Alley first issue forth to
utter their angry bewailings, Croaker's Sound ?
But this, by the bye.

218 REJECTED ARTICLES.

You are to understand, then, that we begin our
walk at the Mansion House ; — turning our eyes
eastward before we set off, and casting up a glance,
first, on our right, at that gloomy monument of city
grandeur, which has been smoked till it looks as
black upon all around it as the pots in its own far-
famed kitchen ; but is, nevertheless, not without a
certain air of dingy dignity, which would be less
exceptionable than it is, if the building were not
perched up above its natural position, by means of
certain mysterious arches, which run beneath it
like the vaults of a church, and the darkness of
which is made visible, all day long even, by a
single sepulchral lamp hanging at the extreme end.

In a line with the face of this really fine build-
ing runs that principal vein in the mine of our
London wealth, Lombard Street: so denominated,
in courtesy,! suppose, to Sir William Curtis ; that
most lumbering of all the Lombards : — for any-
where else it would be called a lane. It is, in
fact, at present, not wide enough to admit
two ordinary aldermen abreast; and I under-
stand that Sir William himself has it in serious
contemplation to move next Session for leave
to bring in a bill for widening it ; as he alleges
that at present he cannot pass up it, in his way to
his banking house of a morning, without the

LONDON LETTERS. 219

eminent danger of crushing some of his own clerks
against the walls. I am told, too, that consider-
ing the buildings of Lombard Street are of brick,
and not of wood, he intends to throw out a hint,
for the better judgment of the House, as to whether
it might not be an improvement on the usual
method, if they were to grant him leave to bring
in a pickaxe instead of a bill.

The other creeks that pour their ever-running
streams westward at this point, and form a con-
fluence into the rapid river of Cheapside, are, to
the left of Lombard Street, Cornhill, the resort of
Lucky Lottery office keepers, Stationers, and
Stage-coaches ; — to the left of that, the space
behind Bank Buildings, which is used chiefly
by Mr. Soane, as a sort of public exhibition-room
for the display of his taste in manufacturing
pillars of that particular order which are intend-
ed to support only themselves, and have capitals
that are anything but capital ; — and finally, to the
left of this, with the chef-d'oeuvre of the above-
named tomb-builder between, is the little street,
or rather strait, which I have alluded to before, and
which has an unaccountable air of melancholy
about it, that even the endless jokes of the end-
less Paddington-stage-coachmen who have lately
been quartered upon it, are unable to dispel.

220 REJECTED ARTICLES.

The whole of this purlieu, on which, in virtue of
our politeness, we are now about so unpolitely to
turn our backs, would, unless I am greatly misin-
formed by a city friend who is not ashamed to
own a familiarity with it, afford food for a very
instructive epistle; and it is by no means impossible
that I may hereafter fulfil my already-hinted-at
intention of exploring it with this view. But at
present we must follow the example of the love-
sick lady in Burns's song, and " keep looking to
the west" all the rest of the evening; especially
as it is only by day-light, and at a particular hour,
that the district we are leaving behind us can be
seen to proper disadvantage.

If we shall, in the course of our evening pilgri-
mage, pass through several scenes more striking
than this of Cheapside, or more picturesque from
their scite and style of building, or more brilliant
from the boundless expense bestowed on the em-
bellishment of particular portions of them, — we
shall meet with none that is upon the whole so
gay, spirit-stirring, and full to overflowing of
variety and life. In almost all the principal
streets except Cheapside, if we meet with here and
there a shop whose splendours put to shame even
its splendid neighbours, we shall also meet with
here and there one whose comparative poverty

LONDON LETTERS. 221

makes us wonder how it can possibly afford to
keep such company. But in Cheapside there is
no such disagreeable dissimilarity. Each seems
determined to shine equally with its neighbours,
and none is ambitious of ow^-shining them. .

In fact, the housewives east of the Mansion
House repair to Cheapside, as to a sort of general
mart for whatever they may want under ordinary
circumstances, — without determining beforehand at
what particular shop they intend to make their
purchase. Whereas, the inhabitants of all other
districts of the metropolis go direct to so-and-so
house, or to such-a-one's shop; and they find
themselves on Ludgate Hill, or in Piccadilly, or
Oxford Street, because the favourite emporium
happens to be situated there.

Which practice is the wiser of the two, is a mys-
tery into which it is not my present pleasure to pene-
trate. It is quite sufficient for me that the former
has' made Cheapside the most lively, various, and
amusing street in all London, taking length for
length ; unless, indeed, you should say that I am
putting the effect for the cause, and that it is the
street which has made the practice, not the prac-
tice the street. This point I promise to argue
with you when we meet, and to prove, to the entire

222 REJECTED ARTICLES.

dis-satisfaction of each of you, that you are each
wrong, whichever side of the argument you may
espouse. In the mean time, let us proceed in our
walk; or rather let us begin it ; — for to my want of
shame be it spoken — (and I fear to the sad discomfi-
ture of the worthy governor's patience,) I have
not yet led you a single step on your way.

Passing on, then, to the western extremity of
Cornhill, where Cheapside nominally begins, we
shall find that the coup-d'ceil of this latter is by no
means striking, even now by gas-light ; for though
it is brighter than almost any other part of Lon-
don, the private lights are so intermixed with the
public ones, that all regularity of appearance is
destroyed, and with it all distinct and uniform effect.
Not but what the converging lines of parish gas,
with the fourfold one which terminates them in
the centre of the street, may easily be traced by
an eye practised in this terrestrial astronomy ; just
as an accomplished star-gazer can trace the con-
stellations amidst the seeming confusion of the
heavens. The light from the shops, too, at this
early hour, when they are all open, eclipses all
the diffused light of the lamps, and you see them
by their form merely, — j ust as you see the planets
and other larger stars, when there is a bright

LONDON LETTERS. 223

moon in the sky. This uniform confusion of
lights is also scarcely at all varied, as it is in
most other streets, by remarkably conspicuous
points, on which the eye is as it were compelled
to rest, whether it will or no. It is not the
fashion here, as it is elsewhere, to insist on being
known as the proprietor of a lamp as big as a
light-house.

Neither can I, as before hinted, introduce you
to many very conspicuous shops in this street,
either for the surpassing splendour of their em-
bellishments, or the richness of their wares. There
is one, however, which cannot be passed by with-
out notice ; since it is perhaps the handsomest
house of retail business in all London. This is
Mr. Tegg's new emporium for everything con-
nected with writing and reading, — from the New
London Encyclopaedia of all Sciences, Arts, and
Knowledge, down to the sixpenny bottle of ink, the
penny-worth of wafers, and the ream of " out-
sides," by the aid of which the forthcoming number
of it will in all probability be put together.

There is a keeping, in the character of Mr. Tegg's
shop, which I admire in all things. It is as inter-
minable as some of the new-old works which he has
begun to issue from it " in numbers'' — and the above-
named more than any perhaps : like that, you

224 REJECTED ARTICLES.

cannot see to the end of it. It is however a noble
place ; and the outside of it is worthy the in —
being of richly carved stone from top to bottom,
and built (and I believe it was inhabited) by Sir
Christopher Wren.

Extremes meet, in more senses than we are apt
to believe, or willing to admit. Perhaps if it
were asked, at any given time, which of all the
merely thriving, but still unnoticed and unknown
inhabitants of any given city or district, is most
likely to outstrip all his competitors, and reach to
the head of his class, the prophet who pitched upon
the poorest and least externally promising, would be
nearest to the truth of the event. Mr. H — of Syd-
ney's Alley, is beyond comparison the richest shop-
keeper in all London ; and they tell me it was but
the other day (some twenty years ago) that he kept
a six-penny stick shop on the very spot where he
has since contrived to accumulate a mine of wealth.
And Mr. Tegg, whose splended emporium has
just gained him the honour of an introduction to
your acquaintance, I myself remember, only two
or three years ago, as the master of a little shop
over the way, the back part of which (a sort of
cabin about six feet square, which, from its heat
and crowd during its hours of business, might
have been inaptly enough termed the black hole

LONDON LETTERS. 225

of Cheapside) he used to devote to the purposes
of an evening mock auction, for the sale of cheap
editions of popular works, to stray apprentices
" of a literary turn," who happened to be passing
by on their errands ; while his lady was selling
the same works in the front shop, for fifty per
cent, more, or less, according to the more or less
sanguine temperament of the body of bidders
who happened to be collected behind. So much
for philosophy and scandal. Now to our walk
again.

On reaching the western extremity of Cheap-
side we shall of course deploy to the left a little, —
leaving the endless, and as it should seem, eternal
scaffoldings of the (intended) New Post Office on
our right, and not even condescending to cast a
single glance down the dreary defile of Pater-
noster Row, — that dark domain of the Booksellers,
from which issue forth (like the Winds from the
black cave of Eolus) those winged messengers of
the national mind which make their way to the four
quarters of the Globe.

Saint Paul's Church Yard, upon which we
emerge immediately on quitting Cheapside, un-
doubtedly bears away the bell, in point of liveli-
ness, from all other existing burying-grounds —
not excepting that of Pere la Chaise itself, at

Q

226 REJECTED ARTICLES.

Paris. At least such is the case with respect to
the northern side of it, along which we are now
to pass. As for the opposite side, that bears ex-
actly the same resemblance to its gay counterpart,
as the dead half of the Lady of Fashion does to
the living one, in that edifying print which, when
I was a boy, (you smile, as if you thought me one
still!) used to attract such solemn attention from

" The white upturned eyes,
Of wondering mortals that fell back to gaze on it,"

as it hungvagainst the centre pane of Mr. Bowles's
print shop farther on.

Let us, however, not pass a step forward on
our way, till we have looked up at the Cathedral,
which here rises before us, like the shadow of
some great mountain.

To use the favourite phrase of a certain assem-
bly when the orator who is "in possession of
the house" is about to advance what he feels to
be a very questionable proposition, — " I have no
hesitation in saying" that St. Paul's Cathedral
can never be seen to so much advantage, in point
of general effect, as at this time of the evening,
when it cannot be seen at all! In the day time
we can see just enough of this unrivalled temple —
for you may take my word that it is unrivalled,

LONDON LETTEKS. 227

even by Saint Peter's at Rome — to discover that
it might just as well be at Rome, keeping Saint
Peter's company, for any general impression that
we can receive from it as a whole, — in conse-
quence of the horrible manner in which the
houses are crowded around it, almost up to its
very doors on every side. In fact, whatever the
worthy governor may hint to the contrary, I am
not starting an idle paradox, but stating a simple
truth, when I say, that by day-light Saint Paul's
is invisible. It is physically impossible to see
it — just as much as if it were out of sight ; — be-
cause, to see any given object, the laws of optics
absolutely require that the eye should be placed
at such a distance as will permit the rays of light
to enter it from every point of the outline ; and
this distance, in the case of Saint Paul's, is at
least twenty times as great as any at which you
can place yourself. Consequently, you can no
more see Saint Paul's when you are walking in
Saint Paul's Church Yard, than you can see
Mont Blanc when you are climbing up the side
of it. But now, when the whole air immedi-
ately about you is in a blaze of light, from the
gas and the shops, you do better than see, you
feel it ; for, as the effect of the lights reaches
to a comparatively small distance they do not in the

Q2

228 REJECTED ARTICLES.

least degree illumine the building, but only make
it show more black by the contrast : so that it
seems to stand lowering down upon you, like one
of the enormous living shadows in Milton, or

" Like Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom"
Saint Paul's Church Yard is to the city what
the Burlington Arcade, which we shall visit by
and by, is to the West-End — a sort of mart for
fancy matters, when the good citizens have a
mind to be more than ordinarily generous, and
pay more for a thing than they think it's worth.
This is the greatest thoroughfare for pedestrians
in all the city; as it collects all that are going
westward, from both sides of Cheapside. The
consequence of this is, that the shops pay higher
rents than anywhere else; and the consequence of
this is, that they ask higher prices and profits ;
and the consequence of this is, that, in order to
get them, they make a smarter external shew than
they otherwise need do ; and the consequence of
this is, that they attend more to what their wares
look than what they are ; and the consequence of
this is, that Saint Paul's Church Yard is, without
exception, the prettiest place in all the city in
which to spend money that you don't know what
to do with upon things that you don't want.
You are to understand, too, that Saint Paul's

. LONDON LETTERS. 229

Church Yard is a spot belonging exclusively to
the City, — the very circumstance which makes its
fortune with the inhabitants of that, (namely, its
being no thoroughfare for carriages), altogether
precluding it from the patronage of any but pe-
destrian purchasers. As it cannot boast any shops
claiming particular mention to the disparagement
of their fellows, we will pass on to Ludgate Hill.

On reaching the top of Ludgate Hill, we stand
on a spot which will not be absolutely interdicted,
to the lady part of the circle for whose edification
these epistles are indited ; for those persons who
set the fashions are not such fools as those who
cannot afford to follow them would insinuate ;
but, on the contrary, know when they are well
served better than their inferiors. It does not fol-
low, from this, that a good shop shall be a fashion-
able one ; but it does follow that a fashionable
one is invariably a good one, and at least as cheap
as a hundred worse. Now Ludgate Hill can
boast three or four shops that are fashionable,
even among fashionable people ; so that it must
not be treated as a place absolutely unknown even
in the western world. I believe Mr. Everington's
show of India shawls really is matchless, not-
withstanding his advertisements declare as much.
Ellis's depot for " everything in the world" of Ha-

230 REJECTED ARTICLES.

berdashery is unrivalled, for united cheapness and .
goodness. And all the first- rate j ewellers and silver-
smiths in London inhabit Ludgate Hill, and have*
done for this hundred years past, in the single
establishment of Messrs. Rundell and Bridge.

For a street which is gifted with two sides of
the way, (and there are very few of the principal
ones in this enviable predicament), Ludgate Hill
is the most popular and populous in all London.
At whatever time you visit it — morning, noon,
night, and all night long — it is everywhere alive
with busy faces, and its houses are shaking to
their very foundations with the rattle of innu-
merable wheels. But at the time we are passing
down it — just at night-fall, when the lamps are
lighted, and the shops are none of them shut — it
is more bright and busy than any other, or than
itself at any other time. It is, however, a street
of business merely, and nobody ever sets foot in
it that can keep away : which I think shews a
singular want of taste : for those who cannot find
an hour's amusement in the mere shops of Lud-
gate Hill, will look in vain for it elsewhere.

The view from the upper end is not striking; for
the street takes a bend about halfway down; and
though brilliantly lighted with public lamps, the
private ones so intermix with them, that all regula-

LONDON LETTERS. 231

rity is destroyed. But in detail Ludgate Hill more
than makes up for its deficiencies of -general effect.
The shops are all good without exception; which
is not true of any of the streets farther westward.
And some of them are unrivalled. There is no-
thing in London equal to Everington's India ware-
house— nowhere else so much expence incurred,
with so little mere empty display of it. The two
great arched windows, each consisting of only
four immense plates of glass held together by
almost invisible polished brass frames,, introduce
the eye to vistas which seem almost interminable,
from tjhe ever multiplying mirrors with which the
whole interior of the shop is lined. The principal
lights, too, are so placed, in the centre of each
window, that they shall break the vacancy with-
out destroying the extent of the view. They con-
sist of several gas-burners, placed in a sort of
Chinese pagoda or temple, composed of richly cut
glass ; without any brass or other ornaments to
take off the lightness and brilliancy of the effect.
These are placed over the counter in the centre of
each window ; and there is another depending
from the ceiling, in the centre of the shop : so
that, when lighted, the place is tenfold more
brilliant than during the brightest sunshine. The
floor is covered with rich Brussells carpetting ;

232 REJECTED ARTICLES.

every part of the walls, from floor to ceiling, and
the whole of the ceiling itself is entirely covered
with looking-glass ; and the articles placed in the
windows are so few, and are hung in such drapery-
like fashion, that, aided by the great Indian jars
which are generally displayed among them, the
whole looks, from without, like a splendid drawing-
room lighted up for a party, or a fairy scene in
an oriental melo-drama.

To this general approval, however, of Mr.
Everington's taste, I must put in one exception, in
justice to my own. I do not object to his em-
ploying a plate-glass multiplication-table for the
purpose of increasing, ad wjinitum, his shawls
and hi^ shopmen ; but I cannot approve of that
part of the arrangement which prevents his fair
customers from judging whether the latter stand
upon their heads or their heels.

There are three or four other shops in the same
trade, close to the above on either side, that do
their best to rival the one which first set them an
example of expensive embellishment. But though
they display as much light, and ten times more
gilding, they fall short of their rival in tasty rich-
ness of effect. They, however, surpass it in the
variety and beauty of the objects they offer to the
mere passing eye — the other merely indicating its.

LONDON LETTERS. 233

calling, by the display of a few elegant nonde-
scripts in the shape of shawls.

I wish this had been your season for coming
among us ; and as you would never guess the rea-
son why I wish so, I must tell you ; — it is this, — that
you will never have such another opportunity of ad-
miring the genius (for they have displayed nothing
less) of our English pattern-drawers. The win-
dows of the linen-draper's shops have this season
been at least as well worth looking at, for the
" works of art" they have displayed, as the R. A.'s
exhibition was.

I'm not joking, I assure you, nor even exag-
gerating, according to my own feelings of the
matter. I do not think anything so beautiful in
its way was ever before invented, as the patterns
of the morning dresses of this season have been :
and I pique myself on being something of a con-
noisseur in these matters. The prevailing trait of
them has been, brilliance and variety of colours —
chiefly the primitive, or rainbow colours — and
often all these united in one pattern. But the
effect produced in many cases has been what I
could not have thought possible — a species of op-
tical illusion, produced by printing one pattern
over another, and sometimes two — so as to give
the impression of seeing one through the other.

234 REJECTED ARTICLES.

But if these beautiful things have not yet
penetrated to your remote regions, you must e'en
suspend any notion you wish to form of them till
they do ; for one of their chief merits is that they
must ever remain nondescript.

In the mean time, let me offer your imagination
my arm, and let us proceed towards Fleet Street ;
for I feel that I am keeping you a most uncon-
scionable time here in the very heart of the city.
But as you will probably never condescend to
visit that spot in any other vehicle than the pre-
sent, perhaps you will forgive me. We must,
however, not quit Ludgate Hill, (the Bond Street
of the city,) without observing that what was
lately its most distinguishing feature, is now un-
dergoing a change which J cannot but think is
anything but an appropriate one j though I ex-
pect few will agree with me in this opinion.
You must know that Rundell and Bridge (you
have heard of them, I suppose, even in Yorkshire)
have hitherto seemed to pride themselves on own-
ing the most ugly, old-fashioned, and ill-con-
ditioned domicile in all the city — so far as ex-
ternal appearance goes. And for my part, I
always used to think there was something high in
this — that it indicated a rine, bold-faced plebye-
anism, to make all the Nobles of the land, up to

LONDON LETTERS. 235

Royalty itself, after passing through the purgatory
of the Strand and Fleet Street to arrive at their
emporium, find the entrance to it less gainly —
less prepared and adorned for their reception —
than that of the trunk-maker higher up, or the
tin-shop lower down, — which were never destined
to be entered by any personages more exalted in
rank than a stockbroker's valet, or an alderman's
housekeeper. To make " the nobility and gentry"
come into the City at all, was bad, or rather good
enough, I used to think ; but to see their splendid
equipages — a dozen or a score at a time — -standing
about the door of the shabbiest looking shop in it —
was better. It seemed as much as to say, you need
us, more than we need you, and we'll let you
know it. But besides this purse-proud display of
a London citizen's amour-propre, I used to think
there was something characteristic and appro-
priate in the entrance to these modern mines of
Galconda being, like the entrance to all other
mines, dark, gloomy, and forbidding ; to say
nothing of its affording a politic contrast to the
blaze of splendour which greets you on getting
within.

But alas ! all my profound speculations on this
matter were the other day, as I was passing by,
buried in a moment, beneath a shower of bricks

236 REJECTED ARTICLES.

and mortar that came tumbling down about the
ears of my friends the two golden salmon that used
to stand sentries over the old-fashioned door-way,
and that I can remember as a sort of city land-
mark as long as I can remember the City itself.
And I have now been obliged to come to the sorry
conclusion, that avarice was the only ambition of
these modern Croesuses, and that it was not till
each partner in the firm could reckon his wealth
by millions, that they would permit themselves to
be seduced, by the examples of their neighbours
and the warnings of their surveyor, into the heart-
and-purse-rending extravagance of laying out a
few thousands merely to accommodate their cus-
tomers, and without having anything more sterling
to show for it than bricks and mortar.

That this was the feeling which preserved the
old entrance so long, and not the one which I had
foolishly enough fancied, is clear; for now that
they have made up their minds to demolish it, in-
stead of supplying its place by a plain, unpretend-
ing, old-fashioned erection, such as my first theory
would have required, they have run up the most
" ///gA-fantastical " affair in all the town, and one
that, for a certain tasty want of taste, is not to be
surpassed even in Regent Street itself.

On passing from Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street,—

LONDON LETTERS. 237

which is a continuation of it on a gentle rise to the
west, as the former is to the east, — we traverse the
north end of Bridge Street, which is terminated at
the opposite end by Blackfriars Bridge. This is
the best street in the City, and has less than any,
that perfectly city air which belongs to all the others.
It is the Pall Mall of the City ; consisting, like that,
chiefly of private houses — private in appearance,
but most of them used for purposes of trade. We
will not pass down it, but merely glance at the
double converging line of brilliant lamps, uniting
at the end with the ascending, and then descend-
ing arch of them which is formed by the rise and
fall of the Bridge.

The execrable line of sheds which face the end
of this street, — continuing in the same line all the
way to Holborn, and called Fleet Market, — we will
not glance at; because they would disgrace the
Capital of the Caribbee Indians, — not to mention
the Capital of the World.

Before quitting this spot, let me say that there
is no other so well adapted for observing that
finest and most characteristic among all our me-
tropolitan phenomena, a genuine London Fog. To
stand opposite the Obelisk at the head of Bridge
Street, when one of these far-famed fogs is coming
on, and look eastward up Ludgate Hill to Saint

238 REJECTED ARTICLES.

Paul's, — which is perhaps just distinguishable in
the distance, like a deeper shadow seen through a
less deep one ; — westward, up the winding defile
of Fleet Street ; — southward, along Bridge Street,
where the thickening, mass comes rolling up from
the Thames, cloud over cloud, each gleaming with
the light of the gas; — and northward, down the
long line of demoniacal looking dens of Fleet
Market, where the flaring oil .lamps of the stall
keepers seem to struggle with the overwhelming
gloom ; — this, I say, is a sight worth coming all
the way from Yorkshire to see, and very likely to
drive you all the way back again when seen.

Fleet Street and the Strand form, for a strait
street, the most crooked one we have. It runs a
mile due east and west, and yet at no one point does
it present a coup-d'ceil worth standing still to
dwell upon. They manage these things better
everywhere else, it must be confessed. True, few
other cities can boast of such a street as this. But
those which have one contrive to make the most of
it ; while we, somehow or other, seem to set our
wits to work to make the very least of it. Here
is, for its length, the most busy, populous, and
lively street in the world, perhaps. And yet you
can make nothing whatever of it as a single thing
— can get no great and general effect from any

LONDON LETTERS. 239

portion of it ; but are compelled to examine it, if
at all, in mere detail, as a whole parcel of short
streets, strung together as if by accident. Its
best quality is its infinite variety. Being the only
direct passage from the West End of the town to
the City, it is the most populous thoroughfare of
London. Consequently, it is the favourite resort
of adventurers in every class of trade, in distinc-
tion from those who have already established
themselves, or whose particular calling does not
depend on mere chance patronage. It is the fa-
vourite spot for the coup-d'essai of young begin-
ners, who fancy that nothing is to be done except
in the midst of a perpetual noise and bustle. But
they soon find it the Purgatory in which they are
destined to remain, to qualify themselves for those
Elysian fields of all London shopkeepers, Bond
Street and Regent Street.

The consequence of all this is, that the whole of
Fleet Street and the Strand does not contain
a single favourite shop. In all my shopping
chaperonings, I do not remember to have leant
against the door-post, or stood with my back to
the fire-place, or sat half on half off that anomaly
in household furniture, the shop- chair, of a single
house in this whole line of street. In short, it is
altogether ungenteel to buy anything in Fleet Street

240 REJECTED ARTICLES.

or the Strand, and nobody does it but those two
numerous classes of persons, who know no better,
and who cannot help themselves, — including in the
former class Country Cousins from the eastern coun-
ties, who are determined to get far enough westward,
even if it costs them a lodging in Norfolk Street ;
and in the latter class all those improvident per-
sons who purchase what they want, not when
they want it, but when they happen to see it
before their eyes ; and as this is likely to happen
oftener in this line of street than in any other, it
is here that they oftenest buy. In fact, the shop-
keepers of Fleet Street and the Strand depend
entirely on chance; and I dare say few of them
expect, arid not many of them wish, ever to see a
customer a second time.

As the constant life and bustle of this line
of street, and its ceaseless din of coaches and
carts, require an exclusively metropolitan taste to
appreciate them, I shall take it for granted that
they will present no great attractions to you, and
shall therefore not detain you much longer in the
midst of them ; merely pointing out a few of the
noticeable spots as we pass quickly along. And
first let me place you before the new opening a
little way up on the left, in Fleet Street, which
has lately been made by a great fire.

LONDON LETTERS. 241

The rage for improvement in the present day
has amounted to a pitch nothing short of
romantic ; for it has actually impelled the citizens
of London, in Common Council assembled, to lay
their heads and purses together for the purpose of
sacrificing some fifty feet of the frontage of Fleet
Street, in order to gain — what, do you suppose ? — a
shorter cut to the 'Change ? or a grand opening
to some new Bazaar ? or an imposing approach to
some " eminent " Assurance office ? No — npthing
of all this, nor nothing like it ; but merely a view
of the handsome spire of St. Bride's Church !

Oh ! that some patriotic incendiary, now that
the good citizens are in the humour for taking
advantage of happy accidents of this nature,
would contrive to set fire to both sides of St. Paul's
Church Yard, and burn to the ground every
thing it contains, outside the railing — not except-
ing the new front of St. Paul's School ! We
should then have some chance of seeing for our-
selves, and showing to others, what would, if we
could see and show it, be the boast of our island,
but is now little better than its disgrace, — since we.
are content to sacrifice it to a few paltry shops.
I suppose there never was such a blunder com-
mitted, by a people that pretends to know the
value of money, as to lay out several millions of

R

242 REJECTED ARTICLES.

it upon a building which is professedly erected
purely to be looked at, but which nobody can see
any more than if it were not there. Truly, the
English are not " the most thinking people in the
world," after all.

But we are wandering and standing still at the
same time. Let us pass on, — merely observing,
that from the commencement of Fleet Street may
be best seen, in both directions, that fine and pe-
culiarly characteristic effect which is never absent
from our evening streets in this part of the town.
I mean the gradually immersing of the farther end
of every vista into that dun, dusky distance — that
" palpable obscure" — which is infinitely more ap-
propriate to a great city than the airy lightsome-
ness which some of them so foolishly affect. In
moving along through the principal streets of the
city part of London, on a thoroughly dark Decem-
ber evening, you can scarcely help fancying your-
self traversing the illuminated galleries of a vast
Mine, or of some city built beneath another city.
And this is just as it should be.

There is nothing to delay us any longer in
Fleet Street; for it does not contain a single
noticeable shop, nor is there a single street branch-
ing off from it that presents the appearance of any-
thing better than an accidental gap caused by the

LONDON LETTERS. 243

separation of the walls. In fact, it is the mere
pave and trottoir of Fleet Street which constitute
its merits. Just before passing out, however,
through Temple Bar, we may, or rather we must
observe the great lumbering clock of St. Dunstan's
church, sticking out upon the end of a square beam,
over the heads of Hackney-coachmen, into the
middle of the street, and insisting on telling us what
time it is, whether we will or no : which, in any
clock but one belonging to a church, would be an
impertinence.

On passing through Temple Bar, we emerge
upon a scene which more than loses in charac-
teristic effect, what it gains in openness and
variety. In fact, the whole of the Strand is a
sort of " debateable ground," not belonging to or
partaking the character of either the city or the west
end ; and I shall therefore, not detain you in it
any longer than to say, that I have nothing either
very pleasant or very particular to say about it.
Fancy yourselves, at once therefore, at Charing
Cross ; and then fancy, if you can, (which you
cannot,) the fine prospect that here opens upon you
on all sides.

Leaving you to enjoy this prospective prospect
for a post or two, I must, as usual, break off
in the centre of my subject : for I perceive, what

K 2

944 REJECTED ARTICLES.

you I dare say perceived some half letter ago, —
that my epistle has already reached a most unread-
able length. Adieu for a day or two.— Your loving
cousin to command,

TERENCE TEMPLETON.

THE SAME TO THE SAME.

I HAVE for a long time thought that the spot
on which I left you standing, at the close of my
last epistle, is the finest, because the most charac-
teristic part of all London — that from which you
get the most various and extensive coup-d'ceil,
and the one which is at the same time most
imbued with the spirit and genius of a London
view. Looking eastward, you have the gloomy
defile of the Strand, thick with smoke, thronged
and thundering with carriages of every kind, and
all alive, like the entrance of a bee-hive, with
ever-busy people passing hither and thither " as
though they would never grow tired."

Turning to the south, we look down what is now,
without exception, the finest street in London ;
that to which I would, sooner than to any one
other, direct the attention of a foreigner ; — Regent
Street, Portland Place, and Piccadilly neverthe-

LONDON LETTERS. 245

kss, notwithstanding. True, Parliament Street
wants the flashy newness of the first of these,
the imposing uniformity of the second, and the
(now that 'the old gate is removed) literally end-
less extent of the last. But on the other hand,
it has the noble width of the widest of these ; the
constant bustle and traffic of the most populous ;
and, mixed with some indifferent houses that serve
as a contrast, several of our best and most striking
public buildings — which are so arranged as to give
it an air of grandeur that no other street or place
in London possesses.

When buildings are joined to each other, — as
the private dwellings are, all through the rest of
London, as well as the public edifices that blend
with them, — of vyhatever character they may be
individually, a want of consistency and uniformity
takes away from them all unity as well as gran-
deur of general effect. But when they are de-
tached, however near together, the case is entirely
different. Then, each, however dissimilar from
its neighbour, produces its own immediate effect
on the spectator's mind, and at the same time
conduces to a certain general effect which is in fact
the amount of all the individual ones.

Now the public buildings in this fine street
may be considered as detached ; and though, with

246 REJECTED ARTICLES.

the exception of White Hull, none of them are
buildings which can, individually, excite much
admiration in those who look for something more
than a mere piling up of stone upon stone, yet all
taken together produce a better impression than
any other collection of equal extent that we can
shew. Those noble private residences, too, on the
left side of this street, which recede considerably,
and have groves of trees and open courts before
them, add to this effect in a very marked manner,
by giving that comparative spaciousness the want
of which so sadly destroys everything like gran-
deur in our metropolis. This latter effect, too,
has lately been increased, by the whole pavement
of this street having been Macadamized : — which

O

phrase, being interpreted, merely signifies that the
whole has been changed from pavement to road ;
and that particular kind of road which, when in
proper order, returns no grating, gravelly sound,
but over which the carriages bowl alono- as if the

O O

tires of their wheels were made of felt. Nothing
can be finer than the effect of this on a wide,
populous, and busy thoroughfare like Parliament
Street. It not only adds an apparent width to
the street, but the carriages bowl over it so
smoothly and silently, that the scene produces, at
a little distance, the united effect of an actual

LONDON LETTERS. 247

scene, and of a sort of animated panorama of
the same, executed on a scale " as large as life."

You are to understand, by the bye, that in the
above, I am not taking you through Parliament
Street, but merely bidding you look down it in
imagination : for it is a street that can be seen to

O

advantage by day-light alone ; being almost en-
tirely without shops, and therefore with little light
but that furnished by the double row of gas-lamps
which sweep down its slight descent.

Looking north- westward, or to the right, from
the spot on which I have placed you, the coup-
d'ceil is still fine, though not equal to that portion
we have just turned from. It consists of irre-
gular masses of building, separated by several
wide openings, the chief of which lead away to
the more fashionable parts — the real West-end of
the town. As we can only see these to advan-
tage a little farther on, we will proceed onward,
through Cockspur Street.

This, like most of the other principal thorough-
fares, has but one side of the way : though this
has it literally ; — the other side of the road being
without a continuous pathway, on account of
the carriage approaches to the various splendid
Club-houses which have lately been erected in this
immediate purlieu ; whereas, when I say in other

248 REJECTED ARTICLES.

instances that a street has, but one side of the
way, I mean one favourite side, on which the
houses are worth fifty per cent more rent than on
the other.

The best thing belonging to Cockspur Street,
especially at this time in the evening, is the
prospect it gives you of the above-named Club-
houses. They are the handsomest ornaments
the town has received since the spirit of im-
provement has taken possession of our rulers.
They have all the grandeur of the town residences
of our principal nobility, without any of that
gloom which always accompanies it except on
their public nights. After dark, a nobleman's
mansion in London looks like a great tomb, ex-
cept on those nights when it takes upon itself
to disturb the rest of the neighbourhood with the
rattle of wheels, from the usual time of going
to bed till that of rising again. But these Club-
houses are transparent in every part, every even-
ing; and in passing by them outside, you see just
enough of their brilliantly lighted rooms, and
gorgeous furniture, to excite you to invest them
with just the sort of company that they may be
supposed to have been built for; — for which inves-
titure, by the bye, they ought to be very much
obliged lo you, seeing that, without that, they

LONDON LETTERS. 249

are just so many " spjendid deserts:" for an En-
glishman thinks he does quite enough towards an
establishment of this nature, if he subscribes his
money to it : to subscribe his person too, is more
than he thinks reasonable. He pays his twenty
guineas a year that he may " belong" to this or
that Club. But to go to it is considerably more
than he bargains for ; and if you insist on that,
you cannot do less than pay him !

As Pall Mall, though one of the most agree-
able streets in all London, is entirely a day street,
and cuts but a gloomy figure at night, we will
leave it on our left, and pass up that lively ano-
maly, the Haymarket ; — keeping on the right hand
side of it at first, that we may have a view of
the handsome new facade of the Italian Opera,
with its lofty colonnade of iron pillars ; and con-
tinuing on the same side, that we may not admire
the fa§ade of the " Little Theatre/' — because it is
neither handsome in itself, nor would it look so if
it really were, in the eyes of those who yearn
after the little unsightly building which it has
superseded, and in which they witnessed their
" first plays."

The Haymarket is a fine, bold-faced, open
street, which has the air of being half-devoted to
business, half to pleasure — the latter, however,

250 REJECTED ARTICLES.

predominating. In fact, besides the two Theatres,
it is half-filled, on the western side, with taverns
and houses of public resort of one kind or
another ; and it is also the first spot where you
begin to meet foreigners lounging along, with
that pleasant air of an infinite want of anything
to do, which* is a virtue that no Englishman
could ever even " assume." The Haymarket con-
tains half a dozen French houses for the enter-
tainment of these happy idlers ; which however
seem to have been established, more with a view
to remind them of what a French Restaurant is
not, than what it is ; and to let them know what
a bad French dinner it is possible to get in Lon-
don, for the price of a good English one. The
opposite side of the way is occupied by shops,
chiefly old established ones, which have a regular
connexion belonging to them : for nobody thinks
of coming here on purpose to buy^ or of buying
here by accident. On the left of this street there
is a handsome opening, terminated by the statue
in St. James's Square ; and the whole street
forms an ascent steeper than any other part of
London, except Saint James's Street, which runs
parallel with it farther west.

Since we left the Strand we have missed those
perpetual oppositely-flowing currents of human

LONDON LETTERS. 251

life, which have the singular faculty, for currents,
of interpenetrating each other without being dis-
turbed or retarded in their respective courses.
On reaching the top of the Haymarket we come
into this double current again, — which is, at this
spot, growing stronger than ever, in consequence
of its course being contracted, while its bulk is
increased by ..the various branches that pour it in
here, towards the east, from the Haymarket, Pic-
cadilly, and Regent Street, and towards the west,
through the narrow straits of Sidney and Cran-
bourne Courts. The consequence of this con-
fluence is, at all times of the day, and particularly
at night, that the north side of Coventry Street
is almost impassable, except to those who are
more than usually expert in the mystery of making
way under such circumstances.

The character of the shops in this street is just
what might be expected from the situation.
None of them make any conspicuous shew, be-
cause no one could stand to admire them if they
did ; and therefore most of them are such as
every neighbourhood must have. The only ex-
ception to this is the Watch and SnufF-box sjiop
of the Hawleys' — which stands just where the
current of traffic separates — and which, next to
that of the same persons in the Strand, (which 1

252 REJECTED ARTICLES.

forgot to shew you,) makes a handsomer outward
display than any of its kind in London.

Just at the point above-mentioned the paths
divide. We will take the left hand one, and pass
into Piccadilly. This is a fine street, no doubt ;
and by day-light there is a character of mingled
liveliness and gentility about it, which makes it
the pleasantest we have, for a mere promenade.
But by lamp-light it does not preserve this cha-
racter ; especially towards the latter half, which is
lighted, or rather not lighted, by oil instead of
gas : wherefore, those who are conversant in the
parish politics of St. George's can alone tell.

The first view of Piccadilly, on entering it here,
at the east end, is fine ; because the gas-lights
extend as far as the eye reaches, and there are
few other private lights to interfere with their
effect. Stepping onward a little, we arrive at
those ever-busy scenes, the Coach Offices, — orna-
mented by a whole menagerie of Spread Eagles,
Bulls arid Mouths, and Bears of all colours,

" Black, white, and grey, with all their trumpery."

These would be worth stopping at for a few
moments, but that we shall meet with a still more
striking specimen of the same characteristic and
truly English scene, higher up. Passing these,

LONDON LETTERS.

253

then, we find ourselves in an open space where
the buildings form a Circus, at the head of Wa-
terloo Place on the left, and with the Regent's
Quadrant sweeping away on the right. If this is
not the most characteristic point of view in all
London, it is without exception the most striking,
and what may be called handsome — especially at
night.

Waterloo Place is situated on a regular decli-
vity, and is terminated by Carlton Palace ; which
building has the merit (the only one it has)
of in no respect throwing into insignificance the
range of which it now, in effect, forms a part.
It is quite as handsome as the haberdasher's shop
on the right of the street which it terminates, or
the bootmaker's on the left : and it is no hand-
somer. Which is, I suppose, just as it should be.
They say we are a Nation of Shop-keepers ; and
accordingly, the national architect who has im-
mortalized himself (for at least fifty years to come)
by his late improvements, seems to think that
there is no reason whatever, why our Shops should
not vie with our Palaces.

I think he is quite right. But then he is carry-
ing his principle to what I am afraid some people
will think an impertinent extreme. There is not

254 REJECTED ARTICLES.

a single portion of Waterloo Place, or even Re-
gent's Street, which, taking length for length,
does not put the poor Palace to open shame, even
before its very face. And as for the County Fire
Office, which forms the pendant to the Palace, at
the opposite end, — it actually looks down upon its
low neighbour, with an air of infinite elevation ;
and its lordly inhabitant and Director, Barber
Beaumont the First, from the mode in which he
directs the Morning Post to announce the Evening
Levees of his Lady, evidently looks upon himself
as sustaining a station at least as kingly as that of
his opposite neighbour George the Fourth.

This is perhaps carrying the levelling principles
of architecture rather too far. And yet they say
Mr. Nash is a great favourite even at Carlton
Palace itself, which he ,has contrived to place in
such a ridiculous predicament. This is a singular
instance of royal humility, and ought not to go
without its record in the annals of the hour.

At all events, Waterloo Place is incomparably
the most complete thing of the kind we possess ;
and at night in particular the effect of it, seen
from either end, is what I must call, for want of
a better epithet, quite classical. This effect js
gained, however, at what some will consider a

LONDON LETTERS. 255

rather extravagant, not to say a ridiculous and
contradictory expence ; namely, by making a
whole street full of Shops look like anything but
what they should look like ; that is to say, what
they are. In fact, a classical shop is a contra-
diction in terms, anywhere but at Pompeii.

Turning from the view down Waterloo Place,
to that which opposes it on the other side the
Circus, we look upon another view which, I
believe, is quite unique. The Regent's Quadrant
has the merit of being still more classical in its
appearance and general effect than Waterloo
Place ; and therefore it has the demerit of being
still less appropriate to the purpose for which it is
intended. In this gloomy climate of ours, shade
is a thing that we seldom have occasion to seek,
even in the country ; and in London, Richard's
moody question of " Who saw the sun to-day ?"
seldom meets with a satisfactory answer during
more than two months in the year. Not that
London needs sunshine. For my part, I think
she is much better without it. She never looks
so thoroughly herself as when dressed in her
favourite dun-coloured cloak of sea-coal smoke.
And as for " a suit of flame-coloured taffeta," it
does not at all become her staid complexion and

256 REJECTED ARTICLES.

sober deportment. And even if she does secretly
affect finery of this kind — even if she cannot help,
now and then, in a momentary fit of spleen, com-
plaining that the sun " disdains to shine" upon her
—the next moment she is reasonable enough to
recollect herself, and add, still with Richard,

" What's that to me, more than to Richmond,"

on whose ineffable beauties he looks equally
lowering ?"

But where am I getting to ? I was going to
say, that the Regent's Quadrant seems to have
been erected for the laudable purpose of shewing
that a set of shops (of which it entirely consists)
may be made to look even less like what they are,
and be less like what they ought to be, than any
part of Waterloo Place, itself. This desideratum
is obtained, in the present case, by constructing
a noble colonnade in front of the said shops ;
which, in the first place, hides them entirely from
the view of those who may be in search of them ;
and in the second place, excludes every ray of
light from them, even when they have been dis-
covered .

But all this, you know, is the shop-keepers'
concern, not ours. It is quite enough for us, that

LONDON LETTERS. 257

the Regent's Quadrant, with its finely simple
concentric colonnades of Doric pillars, sweeping
round towards the left from the point where we
stand, and losing themselves in each other and in
the misty twilight long before they come to an
end, — present one of the most effective views of
this kind that any metropolis can offer.

It is lucky, however, that we are looking upon
this handsome anomaly by night instead of by
day; otherwise we should have to observe that
the execrable English plan, of building our houses
only two stories high instead of five or six, is
nowhere productive of such mischievous effects,
in a picturesque point of view, as in this in other
respects noble range of building. When you
look at the Regent's Quadrant by day-light, and
as a whole, it has the appearance of being in-
tended merely for the lower range of an erection ;
and you cannot help fancying how fine it will look
when it comes to be completed.

The mode in which this portion of the new
street is lighted produces an excellent effect ;
though more, I imagine, from accident than de-
sign. The range of great gas-lamps, that depend
from the centre of each colonnade, give a brilliant,
light to the foot-path and the shops, while the

REJECTED ARTICLES.

colonnade itself, with its massy pillars, intercepts
much of the light from passing out into the car-
riage road, and leaves that in a state of half-shadow
which is much more effective than the highest
light would be.

We will now pass onward, through the spot on
which we have just been dwelling, and continue
our examination of this most striking part of all
our metropolis ; including the range of buildings
from Carlton Palace on the south, to the so much
vituperated Church at the beginning of Langham
Place on the north-east. At the end of the
Quadrant, Regent Street itself opens upon us in
all its new-fledged beauties. And, to be candid,
I must say that I wish those who do all they can
to pnit us out of conceit of this only noticeable
achievement of our own age in the matter of
architecture, would put us in the way of compass-
ing something better, or even hint to us how such
a thing might have been accomplished — I mean,
might have been with our existing " appliances
and means." I do not want them to tell us, that
if Salisbury Plain could be transplanted to the
centre of London, and the Portland stone quarries
could be persuaded to follow it, we might in that
case build a square, a circus, a crescent, and

LONDON LETTERS. 259

what not, that would laugh the low-roofed tene-
ments of Regent Street to scorn, and look down,
in all the freshness of youth, upon the spot where
the latter now stand, when that spot itself shall
know them not, except as so many heaps of pre-
mature rubbish. But this is not the question. I
do not want to know what might have been, if
other things had happened to be as they are not ;
— but what could be, everything else being as it
was. I do not even want to know what London
would have been by this time, if George the
Fourth had been Buonaparte, the House of Com-
mons a Chamber of Deputies, and Messrs. Hume
and Brougham persons in posse. What I desire
to know is, how Mr. Nash could have built a
better street than he has done, with the means he
had at command ; and what I wonder at is, how
he has contrived to build one, half so far from
bad.

If any one of you, or all united, can solve me
these questions, do. My paper being exhausted,
I pause for a reply ; which, if I do not receive in
due course of post, I shall take it for granted
that in matters of this merely metropolitan nature
you yield the pas to my superior knowledge, and
shall in that case proceed to describe the rest of

s2

260 REJECTED ARTICLES.

this new, and by comparison noble, feature in the
face of modern London.

In the mean time know me to be

Your ever-loving cousin,

TERENCE TEMPLETON.*

* It is proper to mention that it is not Mr. Templeton's fault
if this Walk breaks off more abruptly than some of its readers
may wish. But variety being above all things else my object
in the selection of these papers from the vast mass which have
come into my hands, I have been fain to stop short in the middle
of this and one or two other communications, the forte of whose
writers is decidedly continuation : otherwise, I should have been
forced to " curtail of their fair proportions," others equally en-
titled to attention. — Editor.

BROTHER JONATHAN;

OR,

THE NEW ENGLANDERS.

BROTHER JONATHAN ;

OR

THE NEW ENGLANDERS.*

REJECTED FROM THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.

IF his Satanic Majesty should make up his
mind to ascend among us in the present day,

* Unless I am mis-informed, the reason this article did not ap-
pear in its proper place, is, that the writer of Brother Jonathan
has neutralized his American title to the patronage of the " Prince
of Critics," by becoming a writer in Blackwood's Magazine. What
still greater literary enormity (if greater there be in the eyes of
some persons) he. can have committed, to have so long cut off
from critical notice one of the most extraordinary works of its
day, is more than I can guess. At all events, I am happy to
have been the medium of presenting to the public this first tole-
rably fair estimate of a work which (to adopt the distinction made
by its shrewd and lively critic) at least " indicates," if it does
not " display," more talent than the whole body of American lite-
rature besides. — Editor.^

f [Since these pages were sent to press, a paper has appeared in

264 REJECTED ARTICLES.

it is probable his first attempt to ingratiate him-
self with the world will consist in writing a book.
Indeed he can scarcely do less, in compliment to
that particular school which Dr. Southey has
thought proper to do him the honour of dignify-
ing with his style and title. At any rate, if he
should write a book, we shall assuredly be among
the first to " give the devil his due," whatever that
may be. Let us then not withhold it from a
person almost as little likely to think, act, or
write like other people.

It is said that when a certain distinguished secre-
tary of the present day first turned his back (not
" upon himself," but) upon his native country, Ire-
land, and came up to seek his fortune in the great
world of London, he was introduced to Cumberland ;
and that the literary veteran exclaimed when he was
gone, " a talking potatoe, by G — d !" And on this
our first interview with the author before us, sober-
suited critics as we are, and therefore altogether
unaddicted to the style exclamatory, we can

the London Magazine, the anonymous writer of which claims the
authorship of Brother Jonathan. And truly the paper writer,
whoever he may be, is, in some respects, not an unlikely person
to have produced the novel. But there is no saying . for if the
writer in the magazine is to be believed on his word, there's no
believing a word he says. — Editor. ]

BROTHER JONATHAN. 265

scarcely refrain from uttering aloud, " a writing
savage, by G — d !" — for that the work, the title
of which we have placed at the head of this paper,
is the production of a North American savage, we
have no doubt whatever ; and if our " exquisite
reason " for so thinking be demanded of us, all
we can give is, that it can be the production of no
one else.

Not to stand shilly shally over it, (which is a
mode of treatment it will bear less than any other,)
Brother Jonathan is, we will venture to say, the
most extraordinary work of its kind which this
age of extraordinary works has put forth — in Great
Britain, we mean : what America or Germany
may have produced in this sort, is more than we
are able to say ; and the former of those countries
in particular, may, for any thing we know to the
contrary, be able to count a whole catalogue of
similar works, written by the same hand — or
rather hands — for we imagine this person employs
both his hands at the same time, one on one
volume, and the other on the another ! At least,
we can at the moment hit upon no other theory, to
explain the extraordinary and headlong rapidity
of style, as well as the insane incoherence of
matter, which prevail throughout these volumes —

266 U i : J E C T E D A 11 T 1C L E S .

which " prevail" throughout them, but which
(be it expressly understood) are far from being
their only distinguishing characteristics, and which
are still less the causes of our feeling called upon
to notice them.

In fact, the author of these volumes, whoever he
may be — whether " a saint, a savage, or a sage,"
and whether this be his first work or his fiftieth,
(and it may, from its internal evidence, be either
the one or the other,) — is, to say the least of
him, the most original writer of his day ; and
we are greatly mistaken indeed, if he will not
turn out to be, without one exception, the most
extraordinarily gifted of them all, as far as mere
natural faculties go. How far adventitious
circumstances may interfere, to frustrate the
operation of those faculties, or turn their effects to
evil account instead of good, is more than we
shall pretend to predict, in the present early stage
of our acquaintance with their possessor ; but
that no circumstances can ever neutralize them,
we are confident.

Brother Jonathan, if it must be classed at all,
may be placed under the head of that altogether
modern anomaly, the historical novel ; and if an
express object must be assigned to it, it will be

BROTHER JONATHAN. 267

that of illustrating the manners of the Americans,
and of the New Englanders in particular, at the
commencement of the American Revolutionary
War. And in fact, the work does furnish this
illustration, in a most striking and effective manner ;
and as no other work does, and no other writer
that we are acquainted with is at all likely to do.
But the truth is, that neither the above, nor any-
thing else, can be assigned as the specific object
and end of this singular production, — which we
conceive to have been written, not as a means to
any end whatever, but as an end in itself.

We live in an age when, for the first time in the
history of mankind, authors may be said to be
natural productions : that is to say, they spring up
necessarily, out of the circumstances of the times.
We imagine that the writer of Brother Jonathan
was born an author, and that he could no more
have failed to fulfil his calling, than he could to
have exercised any other of the active functions of
his nature. His mind is of such a character and
constitution, that it could not choose but fill itself
to overflowing with ideas and images, no matter
by what circumstances it might have been sur-
rounded ; and being so filled, it cannot choose but
pour its con tents forth, like an overflowing vessel, —

268 REJECTED ARTICLES.

reckless of all consequences, and without any neces-
sary reference to recipients. If he were thrown
upon a desert island to-morrow, and left without
the remotest hope of escape from it, he would, the
day after, begin writing at the rate of fifty pages
a-day, and never cease till his materials were ex-
hausted : we mean his material ones ; for his moral
ones would never be likely to fail. The former
deficiency being, under present circumstances, not
within hope, we see no probable end whatever
to the productions of his pen. At any rate, Dr.
Southey may abandon his reported project of
achieving immortality by writing more than Vol-
taire did ; for here is a person, who, if he lives
to the ordinary age of man, may, if he pleases,
write more than all that Voltaire has written, and
all that Dr. Southey intends to write ; and it will
be his own fault, not Nature's, if he does not
write it all better than either !

The reader will be able to form some faint no-
tion of the fertility (fur we will not call it diffuse-
ness) of this writer's invention, as well as of his
pen, when we say, that though Brother Jonathan
consists of three thick volumes, of four hundred
and fifty pages each, it only manages to make us
acquainted with the events of about a year or so in

BROTHER JONATHAN 269

the life of its hero, — who is in fact only a boy when
we are called upon to take leave of him, and who
during that brief period is made to undergo as
many adventures, both in love and war, as would
fill the lives and furnish forth the pages of half a
dozen ordinary romance heroes and romances. He
has no less than three love affairs on his hands and
heart, all at the same moment ; each appertaining
to a heroine of an absolutely distinct character ;
and each illustrative of a distinct kind of love.
And all this takes place while he is engaged in
the very thick of the " guns, drums, trumpets,
blunderbuss, and thunder," of the opening of the
American War.

But besides this, the hero himself, as well as
every other principal character in the work, is not
only him or her self, but some one, two, three,
or more other persons at the same time. Add to
which, we are introduced to several historical cha-
racters ; two of them no less distinguished than
Washington and Franklin themselves; and one
character who, as if all this were not enough to
fill up the space of one year, is gifted with the
faculty of relating events that never happened at
all!

We shall not attempt to make our readers ac-

270 REJECTED ARTICLES.

quainted with the plot of Brother Jonathan ; and
if for no other reason, for this very sufficient one
— that though we have just read the work from
beginning to end, and with that undivided atten-
tion which extraordinary pleasure in the perusal of
a work always excites, we are at this present
writing as absolutely ignorant of the said plot as
if it had never been propounded to us. And to
say the truth, we consider this circumstance to be of
very little importance, where, as in the case before
us, there is enough to arrest the attention of the
reader, independently of any merely progressive
interest arising from an artificial concatenation of
events. We doubt if the Scotch Novels would be
so good as they are, if their plots were better : we
say this of them abstractedly, as works. And we
do not doubt, that if the writer of them had waited
to make his plots better, he would have ended
by making his works npon the whole not so good ;
for what they would gain by the process in one
way, they would more than lose in another. It is
the characters, the scenes, nnd the descriptions,
that we remember, and desire to remember, and
not the mere vehicle which conveys them to us,
any more than it is the paper and print which
place them before our bodily senses. And perhaps

B R O T H E R J O N A T H A N . 27 1

it will be found on examination, that we feel the
moral beauties of those works more during the
perusal, and are better able to recall them after-
wards, in proportion as the mere plots have gained
little hold of our attention at the moment, and
have dwelt but faintly and confusedly on the
memory.

But be this as it may, the readers of Brother
Jonathan will do well not to complain of its defi-
ciencies in regard to plot : for its writer, to say
nothing of his being evidently a person who will
not be schooled as to what he shall or shall not
write, is altogether incapable, by the constitution
of his mind, even of imagining, much less of
constructing, a regular concatenation of events.
In short his genius is anything (we had almost
said everything) but mechanical ; and we are
greatly mistaken if it is not capable of producing
works which shall possess every possible good
quality, (not to mention every bad one,) only
excepting that one (whether good or bad we shall
not determine) of having a beginning, a middle,
and an end.

We have said that this work is the most original
of its day ; and if originality consists in a something
which can be likened to no other thing that existed

272 REJECTED ARTICLES.

previously, our proposition will not be disputed by
the most cavilling of critics. A work, to be per-
fectly original, should not merely remind us of no
other work of the same class, but prevent us from
thinking of any other in connection with it. And
such, we will venture to say, is the case with
Brother Jonathan.

But this applies generally. To be perfectly
original, a work must possess characters, a turn
of thought and of sentiment, and a style, altogether
its own. And here again Brother Jonathan stands
alone in our literature.

But then, to render its claim to originality of
any value even if admitted, the materials in the
management of which that originality is shewn
must be drawn from the great store-house of
nature, and be referable to something existing
there, and therefore interesting to the mind and
heart of man; otherwise the originality becomes
mere eccentricity and impertinence.

And here too we are bound to say that the
writer before us merits no mean degree of com-
mendation. His characters, though they seem
to come before us as if from a new world of
which we had no previous notion, (as indeed
so far as we are concerned they do,) all bear

BROTHER JONATHAN. 273

that impress of our common nature which makes
them at once pass current with us as beings
in regard to whom we are bound to feel a human
sympathy. The thoughts and sentiments, too,
which, by a mistake common to all writers of fic-
titious narrative, he occasionally thinks fit to put
forth in his own proper person, though full
of novelty, are seldom founded in other than
sound views of the subject in question. And
above all, his style, which is more exclusively his
own than any thing else belonging to him, is so
only because he has had courage to tell his story
in the manner that is most natural to him — be-
cause he has put his heart, his memory, and his
tongue, into his pen, instead of adopting the usual
method, of letting his pen supply the place of all
these.

Let us go a little more into detail ; for as we
intend to present the reader with little or no ac-
count of the plot of this work, we can the better
afford to dwell somewhat minutely upon its cha-
racteristic particulars. Conceive, then, of the
hero of a work, every event of which is fraught
with the most romantic interest, and every page of
which includes some subtle refinement of thought
or sentiment— conceive the hero of a work like

274 REJECTED ARTICLES.

this, as an overgrown lout of a boy, brought up in
the Back Woods of America, — with a stoop in his
shoulders, a swing in his gait, hob-nailed shoes
upon his feet, a smock-frock upon his back, a
nasal twang in his speech, and almost every phrase
he utters regular Yankee ! And conceive (if you
can) how all this shall obtrude itself at every page,
without for an instant weakening the interest you
from the first moment feel towards this singular
hero, or even throwing over him the slightest air
of the ridiculous — an association which is fatal to
anything like a serious interest, however deep-
seated it may previously have been.

Courageous even to a pitch of mad-headed fool-
hardiness, — yet occasionally trembling in his shoes
with sheer affright ; — open and sincere as Truth itself,
— yet sometimes artful, hypocritical, and a liar; —
proud and ambitious as Lucifer, — yet fooling away
his time in idle fancies and effeminate dreams ; —
an adorer of reason and justice,- — yet pursuing to
the verge of destruction and death a being who
never injured him ; — his heart " pure as the thought
of purity,"' — yet leading him to cast himself head-
long (though advisedly) into the lowest depths of
profligate degradation ;— high-minded and chival-
rous as a hero of ancient romance,- — yet helping

BROTHER JONATHAN. 275

daily injuries and insults on the heart that avowed-
ly adores him, and that he adores : — such, and a
great deal more, is the compound of contradictions
to which this author introduces us, under the
name of Walter Harwood. And yet, such is the
intuitive skill and knowledge of human nature with
which he has mixed up together (without amalga-
mating) these opposites, that in no one instance
do we feel them to be necessarily incompatible
with each other, nor do they greatly interfere with
that sentiment of deference and respect which
novel readers are bound to entertain towards a
hero of three goodly volumes.

But if the hero of this strange work is not of
the ordinary class, the heroine with which our
author has supplied him is at least a match for
him in singularity. At our first introduction
it is difficult to suppose her anything but a born
idiot. Presently, however, we begin to fancy she
is more mad than, foolish, and more cunning than
either. But after a little further acquaintance
we find her one of the sweetest and purest, one of
the most delicate and feminine of all the beings
that imagination has formed from the actual
models which nature has furnished. With all
the wildness and originality, as well as all the

T 2

276 RKJKCTKD ARTICLES.

fervour of character possessed by her lover, she
has that equable placidity of temperament, and
that steady consistency of feeling and of purpose,
which were never allied to the former qualities
except in woman. We know of no imaginary
character bearing the slightest resemblance to
Edith Cummin, with the exception of Mignon, in
Goethe's Wilhelmeister — from whom it is probable
that the author before us took his notion of Edith.
But let us add, that if she wants that etherial
lightness of outline, and that thin transparency
of colouring (if we may so speak), which belong
to the singular creation of Goethe, and which
give to it an almost spirit-like and superhuman
air, she is altogether infinitely more natural, with-
out being either less imaginative, or less touch-
ingly simple, child-like, and innocent. And the
consequence of this difference is, that she excites
in the reader a much more permanent and va-
luable, because a more purely human interest and
sympathy.

But as we have hinted before, our author is not
satisfied in supplying his hero with one heroine,
but furnishes him with no less than three ; be-
tween whom he is at no little loss how to divide
himself fairly, and according to his somewhat

BROTHER JONATHAN. 277

singular notions of right and justice in such
matters. As far as we can judge for him, his
heart seems to belong throughout to his first love,
Edith ; his imagination to Olive ; and his reason
to the poor, polluted, and spirit-broken, but pure-
minded and repentant Emily.

These two latter supernumerary ladies we can-
not stay to introduce formally to the reader ; but
we must not pass them by without saying that
both characters are drawn with great distinctness
and truth, and that both evince in the author
a very subtle as well as a very extensive acquaint-
ance with the movements of the human heart ;
an acquaintance, however, which we must con-
sider as more intuitive than practical, or in other
words, as springing rather from a diligent watch-
ing and questioning of his own nature, than from
actual observations on that of other people.

Of the other imaginary characters introduced
in this tale, we can only stay to particularize two
— both of which are as entirely original as those
already referred to, and both are drawn with
equal vigor, spirit, and truth, so far as the ex-
tremely confused and defective nature of the plot
permits us to follow and observe them. Jonathan
Peters, while he retains that title, and during his

278 REJECTED ARTICLES.

appearance in the family of the hero's father, is
undoubtedly sketched with a bold, masterly, and
felicitous pencil. His admirable good sense, and
the skill with which he applies it, in connection
with his extensive knowledge of the world and
the human heart, to gain and keep an over-
whelming ascendancy in the family in which
(nobody can tell for what reason) he has domi-
ciliated himself at the opening of the story, — pro-
duce a most powerful effect upon the reader ; an
effect which is rendered necessary, in order to sus-
tain the influence which he is afterwards to exer-
cise (unconsciously and unintentionally) upon all
the subsequent events of the story, when he has
almost wholly disappeared from it. As to his
after introduction, under his aliases of Warwick
Savage, Evans, &c. these are among those gra-
tuitous make-weights to the plot, which alto-
gether confuse and destroy its consecutive in-
terest, and render it little better than a wild and
incoherent hubbub of scenes and incidents, pro-
ducing together the effect of a feverish dream.

The other character that we have alluded to
above is Harry Flemming — a sort of Ferdinand
Mendez Pinto — a " liar of the first magnitude."
It should seem from the principle feature of this

BROTHER JONATHAN. - 279

character, as well as from some other points in
the work, that our author believes in the here-
ditary nature of the moral qualities of man. At
any rate, the only argument we are offered, to
shew that Harry Flemming is the son of his father,
is, that whereas the father was a little given to
embellishment in his relation of any event that
occurred to him, the son invents the whole story
from beginning to end, and relates it in such a
manner that you believe it at least as confidently
as if you saw it happen. He invents too, with a
sincerity of purpose, and a fervour of imagination,
which almost have the effect of doing away the
demerit of his delusions, by making them more of
poetical creations than anything else. It has
been said in accusation of poets, that they are
only liars : and it may be said in excuse of our
author's liar, that he is only a poet. This cha-
racter does not occupy much space in the work ;
but what there is of it is the most spirited sketch
of the whole.

The only particular in which this singular au-
thor has chosen to follow any fashion but his own
in this work, is in the introduction of other than
the natural machinery of the story : whether to
call it super, sub, or iM-natural, we cannot very

280 REJECTED ARTICLES.

well determine. In conformity with the taste of
the day, the writer of Brother Jonathan, as if his
story was not wild and incoherent enough in
itself, has made the " confusion worse con-
founded/' by introducing a Prophet and a Witch,
who seem to act the parts respectively of good
and evil genius in regard to the hero and all his
concerns, and who contrive by their joint influ-
ence, or rather their perpetual opposition, to make
that absolutely and irremediable unintelligible,
which would have been very nearly so without
their aid. Perhaps the writer may tell us that
he has introduced these two mischievous Marplots,
because he found them in the state of society in
which his scenes are laid, and which they pro-
fess to illustrate ; and he will probably shelter
himself behind the example of our illustrious
countryman, the author of Waverley : though we
scarcely think him a person likely to plead pre-
cedent for anything he may think fit to either say
or do. The truth is, that with all his strong
sense and sturdy straitforwardness, he has a
lurking taste for the unintelligible, and a faculty
that will secure him from ever being debarred the
indulgence of it. And as to mere mystery in the
abstract, he knows very well that there cannot

BROTHER JONATHAN. 281

be too much of that in a work which would hope
to succeed with the class of readers to whom his
ostensibly addresses itself ; that in fact a novel,
to be popular with those who will pay for the
reading of it, must be " perplexed in the extreme"
— or rather, from one extreme to the other — from
the beginning to the end.

Thus far of the merely imaginative portion of
this work ; — which portion, though it is un-
doubtedly the result of great intellectual power,
and is fraught with much scattered interest, and
every here and there with the most exquisite
touches of passion and pathos, is altogether wild,
incoherent, and unsatisfactory as a whole; and
what is still worse, it is not without a leetle
affectation — to adopt a New England word from
its author.

But not so the portion which is founded on
mere fact and observation. That is in its way,
and as far as it goes, incomparably the best illus-
tration of American manners we have yet been
presented with. The half-savage, half-civilized
scenes at the early home of the hero, on the bor-
ders of the Back Woods — those which occur on
his journey thence to New York — those connected
with the first declaration of American indepen-

282 REJECTED ARTICLES.

dence, and the opening of the War — the sketches
connected with the native Indian manners, and
growing out of their wild superstitions — and
finally the descriptions of local scenery — all these
are drawn by the hand not only of a master, but
of a master who has been absolutely self-taught ;
or rather, who evidently believes that there is no
teacher worth attending to in such matters, but
Observation alone ; and who therefore boldly re-
peats to us, in so many words, what she has re-
peated to him.

Considering the kind of scenes and the class
of manners which his narrative leads him to place
before us, it is pretty clear that such a describer
must not reckon upon the suffrages of readers
who pique themselves on the refinement of their
tastes. But those who like to hear the plain
truth told in the plainest words that will tell it,
may here meet with some of the most lively,
spirited, and vigorous pictures of national man-
ners that have ever been painted. We have no
mincing the matter here — no squeamish keeping
out of sight of ungainly objects or obnoxious
habits of feeling — no finical finin«- down of

o O

phrases — no effeminate refinements of one thing
into another, or artificial contrasts which neu-

BROTHER JONATHAN. 283

tralize all truth of effect. In short, the author of
Brother Jonathan has the wit to see, and the cou-
rage to attempt to shew, that truth and nature
are quite good enough to be looked at. as they
really are, and are much more likely to appear
what they really are when looked at in their
nakedness, than when dressed up in the Monmouth
Street foppery of falsehood and art.

We shall now present the reader with a few
extracts from this singular work — without which,
and indeed we are almost afraid with which, he
will not be able to gain, from what we have said,
anything like a distinctive notion of it. And to
say truth, we shall not be very sorry if this should
be the case, provided what we have said should
lead to the general perusal of the work itself : for
we are disposed to fear, that the extraordinary (
originality displayed in Brother Jonathan is cal-
culated to insure it anything rather than exten-
sive popularity in the present day, unless some
adventitious impulse be given to it from without
in the first instance. And we are confirmed in
this fear by the fact of its having been already
many months before the public, without its having
hitherto attracted any notice whatever.

We have already hinted at the singular cha-

284 REJECTED ARTICLES.

racier of the heroine of this New England story.
We cannot attempt to convey a notion of Edith
Cummin by means of extracts from those por-
tions of the work in which her character is de-
veloped. But we will do the next best thing, by
presenting the author's conception of her.

*" Edith Cummin — we shall pass over the rest
for the present — was a Virginian ; a niece of
Abraham Harwood : a creature, so whimsical, so
contradictory, that, for many years, until her cha-
racter changed, (all at once, in a single winter,) it
would have been quite impossible to describe her,
so as to give one a true notion of what she really
was ; without leading her out, making her talk,
and showing her off, in a thousand ways, at the
same time.

" She was little ; very girlish, very spirited, and
quite singular in her whole appearance ; with

* The reader will have the goodness to attribute the singular
punctuation of these extracts to anybody but us. Whether it has
been invented by the printer of Brother Jonathan, or the author,
is more than we can guess. But of this we have very little
doubt, that one most prevailing cause of the want of success of
the work is this very system (for it is done, not by accident, but
on a kind of system, such as it is) of pointing— which mangles
and fritters away the effect of many of the finest passages, and
changes not a few into pure and impracticable nonsense.

BROTHER JONATHAN. 285

rich, plentiful hair, always in the way of herself,
or somebody else ; a pale complexion ; large,
hazel eyes, full of moonlight and water, never
still for a moment : — one hour she was a woman,
the next, a child, a baby, a simpleton ; with
hardly wit enough to keep herself out of the fire.
Now, she would be found sitting in a corner,
alone; purple with cold ; poring over some great,
heavy, serious book, such as no other child,
of her age, ever thought of poring over; and,
after a little time, perhaps, cuddled up in a heap,
with her loose hair falling about her face ; pout-
ing and sobbing over some poor two-penny ballad,
such as no other child ever thought of sobbing
over."

" She had a thousand childish ways with her ;
innocent, simple ways, which there was no speak-
ing seriously about, absurd as many of them were ;
a sprightly, sincere temper ; without one atom of
art, or affectation. She had a knack, too, quite
her own, of bringing the water into your eyes, and
a smile about your mouth, at the same time ; and
always (which was the charm, after all) without
intending it, or knowing it, or even caring for it,
if she did know it. She loved romping ; ' that
she did ;' and would go without her dinner any
time, for a good long race with her cousin Watty's

286 REJECTED ARTICLES.

large dog, under the elm trees ; or any thing
else, for a few hearty tumbles, all alone — head
over heels — in the long fresh grass ; or the newly
mown hay, before the rich clover blossoms were
dead."

" During these pastimes, it was amusing enough
to see, with what an air, she punished all intru-
ders ; not even excepting her ' dear, dear cousin
Watty/ whom, in the language of old Virginia,
she loved, ' mighty bad ; so she did.' In such
a case, at such a time, Edith would look and
speak, much more like a dwarf woman, caught
perhaps with her night-cap on, or slippers off;
than like a sad little torn-boy, as — begging her
pardon — she certainly was. — Her large eyes would
sparkle, — so the men ' allowed' — like the mis-
chief; and she would stand a tip-toe, with a
dignity, quite heroic, for such a diminutive little
creature.

" She was perpetually doing what nobody was
prepared for — perpetually making people jump;
and had, if there be such a one, the faculty of
unexpectedness within her; like a Leyden jar,
always ready to be let off. At one time, it would
really appear, as if she had been lying in wait,
like a torpedo-fish, in the water, for an opportu-
nity to set people tingling; at another, as if she

BROTHER JONATHAN. 287

enjoyed, in her very soul, the confusion of those;
especially if they were grown up, who, led astray
by her manner and size, had mistaken her for
a child. A word, or a laugh, was enough ; just
when some stranger, perhaps, who had been
looking at her absurd gambols, with a large dog,
was on the point of pulling her into his lap, for a
fine romp — only a word, or a laugh; and he
would start back, as if he had been playing with
an electrical machine."

" Between the upper and lower parts of her face,
there was a remarkable contradiction. Judging
by her forehead and look, you would call her
much older ; by her mouth, much younger than
she was. Her large eyes were sometimes full of
strange, womanly meaning ; solemn and beauti-
ful, beyond anything that we see in the eyes of
children ; while her mouth was always — no matter
where she was — no matter though her eyes were
full of tears — her mouth was always just ready for
a laugh.

" Her character was like her face ; whatever she
did, whatever she said, was full of contradiction.
She was a puzzle. She would say the strangest
out-of-the-way things ; now, like a little child ;
now, like something wiser than a woman : at one
time, as if she wanted common sense ; at another,

288 REJECTED ARTICLES.

as if she were inspired. She had, in truth, all
the simplicity of a child, with much of the woman's
loftiness."

" There were times also, when her thoughtful
eyes, her pale face — and mouth, like the wet rose-
bud— were brimful of something, like poetry;
and others, while she sat in the corner, with a
profusion of hair, overshadowing her whole face
— when she might have passed for an idiot ; so
patiently — so stupidly tranquil, would she remain,
for a whole hour, together ; looking into the
ashes, where others were parching corn ; or watch-
ing the current of sparks, that rushed up the
chimney, whenever the ' back log ' moved, or
the ' forestick ' parted in the fire. — There was
that, also, in her look and manner, while she
was reading by herself; or listening, attentively,
to the conversation of others, which would have
been regarded, by some, as the indication of a soft
and submissive temper. But, if anything hap-
pened ; if she were taken by surprise ; or found,
on looking up, that she had been observed —
there was, instantly, over all her face, a look of
insulted womanhood ; a something absolutely im-
perious about her clear forehead ; and a sort of
beautiful petulance about her mouth, which, be-
fore one could make up his opinion of her, would

BROTHER JONATHAN 289

be gone — for ever gone — like the shadow of a
strange bird, from a lighted mirror." Vol. I. pp.
26—33.

Our next extract shall consist of a piece of local
description, in which these volumes abound, but
much of which, though steeped in a vein of fine,
bold, full sounding eloquence, is rather poetical
from its mistiness than picturesque from its pre-
cision and distinctness. The following, though
somewhat overstrained and extravagant, conveys
a gorgeous and glowing idea (not a picture) of the
sight it describes.

" The autumnal beauty of a North American
forest cannot be exaggerated. It is like nothing-
else on earth. Many a time have we gone through
it ; slowly tilting over a pretty blue lake, there,
among the hills • our birch canoe dipping, with
every motion of the paddle — the waters beneath
us — all the mountains about — all — unknown to
the world ; in a solitude — a quiet— profound as
death — and bright as heaven ; the shores over-
hung with a superb autumnal foliage ; and a sky
so wonderful — so visionary — that all the clouds,
and all the mountains were of a piece, in the clear
water ; and our boat was like a balloon.

"" Say what you will, there is nothing to be
compared with a scene of this kind — about an

u

290 REJECTED ARTICLES.

hour before sunset—in the depth of a great North
American solitude ; — a vast amphitheatre of wil-
derness, rock and mountain — after the trees are
changed by the frost. People may talk of their
fine Italian skies ; of their hot, bright East In-
dian skies ; of the deep midnight blue, of the
South American skies. We have seen them all ;
slept under them all ; slept under a sky, like one
great moon ; — worshipped under them all ; — seen
them through all their changes, of storm and
sunshine — darkness and light ; and we say, that,
in reality, they are dim, heavy — unclouded, un-
interesting--compared with your North American
skies, a little before, and after sunset.

" And so, too, of the garniture ; the superb gar-
niture of a North American wilderness, after two
or three clear, frosty nights. There is nothing
to compare with it, under heaven. The moun-
tains— vallies — woods — all burst into flower ; and
all at once. Other countries are in a better state
of cultivation. Their trees are less numerous ;
their wild shrubbery, less like a vegetable inunda-
tion over the land — covering every foot of the
earth ; or the changes of their colour, from season
to season, are slow and gradual.

"It is not so, in America — North America.
There, the transformation is universal — instanta-

BROTHER JONATHAN. 291

neous. A single night will do it. In the even-
ing of a fine day, perhaps, all the great woods
will be green — with hardly a red, or a brown,
or a yellow leaf. A sharp frost will set in, at
night. Before the sun rises again, the boundless
verdure of a whole province — a whole empire,
in truth, will be changed. In the morning, there
will be hardly a natural green leaf to be found.
Before a week is over, go where you may, through
the superb wilderness, you will meet with no-
thing but gay, brilliant scarlet — purple — orange ;
with every possible variety of brown, light blue,
and vivid crimson; or blood colour. Of all the
trees, none but the evergreen tribe, will keep
their integrity. They will show along the battle-
ments of the mountain — darker than ever — more
cloudy than ever ; like so many architectural ruins,
or surviving turrets — in the splendour of the sur-
rounding landscape.

" No, no — it is not saying too much of all
this beauty — of all this great magnificence —
when the fresh, cold, brisk wind of the season,
gets among the branches — after such a night —
and blows up the superfluous leafing, to the warm
sunshine — like a tempest, among prodigious
flowers — tearing and scattering the tulip colour-
ed foliage over all the earth, and over all the

u 2

292 REJECTED ARTICLES.

waters ; no, it is not saying too much — merely to
say — that, under heaven — throughout all the
vegetable creation, there is no spectacle of beauty,
or show ; of richness, or grandeur — to be com-
pared with it. Imagine — we do not mind ap-
pearing a little absurd, if, thereby, we may give
the stranger, a true idea of this appearance —
imagine, therefore, a great wilderness of poppies,
or tulips— outspreading itself on every side —
reaching quite away to the horizon — over hill, and
over valley ; — or a wood, literally encumbered—
heavy — with great, gorgeous, live butterflies — for
ever in motion.

" We have been a traveller ; we have looked
upon the dark Norwegian woods — the dull ever-
greens— towering up — into the sky — covering
whole provinces ; woods, too, of stupendous oak
— each tree, if the soil were divided, overshadow-
ing a man's inheritance — flourishing bravely
through whole territories : more than one quiet,
solitary place — entirely shut in, by the hills —
flowering all over — all the year round. But we
have never met with — never heard of — never
looked upon, elsewhere, that profusion of glorious
vegetable beauty, which is to be seen, every
'fall,' in the woods of North America; heaped
up, on all the banks of all (,he rivers — up— up —

BROTHER JON ATHAN. 293

to the very skies — on the great mountains — or,
accumulated over the low countries — and welter-
ing there, all the day through, in the light, or
shadow — wind, or sunshine, of the season." Vol.
ii. pp. 29—33.

We shall now offer a specimen of those parts of
Brother Jonathan which perhaps deserve to rank
as the most valuable, and will assuredly be looked
upon by many as the most if not the only intelli-
gible ones. We mean the scenes illustrative of
the state of manners and society in the country
where the events of the story take place. The
rare merit of the following scene consists in the
literal and uncompromising truth with which every
part of it is given. Walter Harwood, the hero of
the story, is about to leave his home in Connecti-
cut, and seek his fortune at New York ; and he is
conveyed thither after the following fashion — the
only one of the time.

" Walter sprang away; and came bounding
over the low stone walls, and brush fences, ' like
a deer/ — with a large dog at his heels. A mo-
ment more, and he was stowed away in what is
called a * stage,7 in America. But Panther,
somehow — the large dog — did not appear to com-
prehend, precisely, the nature of the arrange-
ment. He stood still— waiting the sign from his

294 REJECTED ARTICLES.

beloved master — friend — companion — either to
spring up, on the roof— into the carriage — or to
follow a-foot.

" The driver blew a farewell blast. Panther
moaned — but stood still. The wheels moved —
rattled — smoked : he stood still, nevertheless,
waiting the signal, up to the very last moment,
poor fellow ; when the carriage turned out of the
lane, all at once, into the great high-road. He
uttered a howl, when he saw that ; ran off to the
fence — rose up — and put his two fore-paws upon
the gate. Walter saw him — heard his voice, end-
ing as he had never heard it before, in a sick,
angry, impatient yelp, or two. He covered his
face, then ; pulled his hat over his weary eyes ;
and got back into the carriage, as far as he
could.

" ' A pooty consid'rble funny noise that, I guess
— for sich a whelp,' said one of his neighbours.
' I never heard nothin' like, it afore.'

" ' Nor I' — said another — * in all my life : ony
once — tell ye how that was, though. One day,
our Towzle — he fit a painter; — well — and so,
the painter, he smacks him thro* the ribs — clean
as a whistle — same as a cat ; — well ; an' so ; ever
see a cat ? — wild cat, I mean ? — well — an' so —
poor Towzle, he sets up sich a noise ! ri^ht away ;

BROTHER JONATHAN. 295

jess like that; — well — an' so, I say; you, what's
that air dog's name ?'

" ' Poor Panther, sir — only poor Panther.'

" They had now come to another turn ; a place,
where Panther never failed his poor master, be-
fore, when he was going away. Our hero looked
out; rubbed his eyes — glanced, hastily, over
the grounds — but no — no Panther was to be seen.
The brave brute had given up all hope. The
boy's heart sunk within him. He drew back,
further and further, into the deep seat ; with a
feeling, so unworthy of a man ; so unlike any
that he had ever known before, — through sickness
— through sorrow — that he would have wept
aloud, perhaps, if he had been altogether alone.

" ' Seems to take it ruther unkindly, judge,
hey ? ' — said one of the people. " Home sick,
a few — I guess — don't you ? — wonder who that
air baby-faced gal was ; nation white, I guess —
never seed any body half so white afore ; love sick
— I guess. I say, you — sweetheart o' your'n, I
guess — hey ?'

" ' If you are speaking to me, sir/ said our boy;
starting bolt upright ; pushing away his hat ;
and showing his lighted eyes — the brightness
whereof was rather alarming : — ' If that's for me,
sir , you'd better look out.'

296 REJECTED ARTICLES.

" ' Nation !'

" ' A leetle on the huffy order, I guess ! a hit
you ? — Like to have a tussel, may be ? wouldn't
ye ? — or a good clever game o' rough an' tumble ?'

" ' Yes ! with all my heart — yes ! — would you ?
If you would, Mister, what's your name, you have
only to say another word about my sweetheart, as
you call her ; — baby-face ! — ye great black lookin'
lubberly beast.'

" The convulsive agitation of his mouth was
quite enough. They grew still, immediately, on
every side of him ; not so much from fear, as
from curiosity to know more of ' sich a quair
funny sort of a feller.' One gave a whistle of sur-
prise ; another, a sort of low, good humoured growl ;
after which they, and all the rest, were quiet.

" Here was the boy's first essay in outbraving
'real imperdence.' He saw the advantage of it,
long before they parted ; for, all the passengers
came to be on good agreeable terms with him —
pleasant, free, and sociable, without being saucy."

"The 'stage' was a long, rough-built, heavy
waggon ; capable of ' accommodating ' twelve or
fourteen people inside — they carry no outside pas-
sengers, up to this day, in that country. There
was only one way of getting up to it, or into
it ; and that was, over the backs of the horses, by

BROTHER JONATHAN. 297

climbing, or by storm. It would go — lumbering,
pitching and jolting over the almost impassable
roads, of the country, with a wheel, or two, for
ever in the air — at the rate of about forty miles
a-day — ' more or less.'

" There were nine live passengers aboard ; with
a great heap of rubbish ; and a large dead hog.
Eight of the former, were human beings; the
ninth, a sucking pig. Walter, unhappily for him,
was rigged out, in all his go-to-meetin' finery ;
unhappily, because, he never appeared so like a
great, overgrown, awkward country boy, as when
he was thus equipped; nor ever to such advan-
tage, as in his old clothes ; a striped woollen
frock — or short gaberdine ; with his collar open :
— his throat naked — and his rich, loose hair
huddled about his neck.

" He wore, now, a large, broad brimmed, low
crowned, wool hat — newly ironed up, for the
occasion — you might have seen your face in it
— * a leetle o' one side' — with a flaming brass
buckle, in front ; a dimity waistcoat — striped with
dark yellow — it had been a petticoat of his mo-
ther's— -a part of her wedding dress — the flaps
hanging half down to his knees ; cow-hide shoes
— newly greased with a famous preparation of the
time, for keeping out water — which left a * smooch'

298 KEJECTEl) ARTICLES.

upon whatever they came near ; a pair of huge
buckles in them, too ; — his hair gathered in a
club, and bound up, with a piece of sky-blue
* worsted ribbon ;' a large, bright, silver brooch,
firmly skewered into the bosom of a coarse, clean,
good-looking shirt, — which it held, as it were, by
the teeth — so that his white skin was visible
above, and below it. His look was that of a
lubberly country boy; — a * jinooine' Brother Jona-
than— going forth, from his home, to ' undertake '
a school for the winter, wherein he may retail out
such learning, as he has been able to ' lay in/ at
wholesale, the summer before, at some of the
schools, academies, colleges or universities, of
North America.

" The passengers were very still, after the re-
buff, which Walter bestowed on his very curious
companion. They were all, or the greater part of
them, nearly or quite asleep ; their heads bob-
bing about, all the way, as if there were no par-
ticular owners for them ; — all was quiet — as quiet,
in truth, as it could be, in such a carriage,
where the smothered squealing of the pig ; the
noisy rattling of the iron ware — with all the ' an'
so forths, an' so forths, and so forths,' — were
quite enough to drown the voice of an ordinary
man, while in ordinary conversation. They got

BROTHER JONATHAN. 299

along very well — very — till a sudden, rough jolt,
brought all their heads together, at once, with a
tremendous crash, on the * near ' side of the car-
riage ; the other being ' up a tree ' — that is —
lodged on the top of a large, rugged stump, so
that, for half a minute, or more — the ' stage '
appeared in a sort of irresolute balancing humour;
as if undetermined whether to go ' clean over,
slap* — or only part way.

" The pig squealed as if the devil was in him :
the passengers awoke; started up — got loose
from each other ; and crawled out, as well as
they could, over the horses, into the deep heavy
mud ; making wry mouths ; growling — limping
— and charing their limbs; all of them being
more or less beaten, bruised, or ' banged/ by the
lumber, and stuff, which, like themselves, were
inside passengers over the same outrageous, abo-
minable road."

They soon recover from this mishap, only to be
plunged into a still greater, and one which is re-
lated with equal truth and spirit. They are going
down a horrible hill at a fierce rate, in order, as
the driver says, " to keep the cattle out o* the
way o' the stage," when suddenly it is discovered
that some fire from their pipes has got among the
straw about their feet.

300 REJECTED ARTICLES.

" The horses took fright. Away they sprang,
at full speed, in the midst of the uproar, taking
the heavy carriage off the ground, at every jump.
Our hero leaned back into the seat, and held his
breath ; for he felt as if they were tipping over,
all the way — as they went — leap after leap —
escaping the uptorn trees, by a sort of miracle,
every time ; and shaking the driver, rudely enough
to dislocate every bone of his body ; for his feet
rested on a foot-board, which, in America, was
attached, of course, to the rough axle-tree : Away
they sprang — away — away — while the harder the
poor old man shrieked, in his fear, the harder they
galloped. — * Fire ! fire !' cried he — ' murder ! mur-
der !'

" ' Stop his throat, for the love o' God — whoa !
whoa !' said the driver — leaning backward into
the carriage; ' whoa! whoa!' straining every
muscle of his body, till he was red in the face ;
and speaking through his teeth. — ' Whoa ! whoa !
stop his throat ! whoa ! there ; whoa ! gag him !
gag him ! — It's all over with us, if they get more
head way ! — Steady ! steady ! — Jam a cloth down
his throat ; or a hankycher ! Whoa ! whoa —
Choke him.'

" ' There we go ! — there we go !' — repeated the
old muii ; breaking loose from Walter, and trying

BROTHER JONATHAN. 301

to throw himself out of the carriage, over the
heads of the horses. — ' There we go !'

" ' Say your last prayer ! — nothin' but a merigle
can save us ! ' — cried the driver, with a voice
of horrible consternation. — 'There we go! — sure
enough !'

" They were approaching a sharp turn — with a
precipice on the left ; and a steep, high bank, or
wall, on the right ; all the way incumbered, or
broken up, with huge pine trees, or stumps,
which threw their prodigious roots quite across
the road.

" ' Driver ! driver ! '— « What say ? '— ' Keep
to the right ; will you ? ' — ' What for ? ' — * Upset
us, if you can — pitch us into the bank, there !'
— ' What for ? ' — ' Why ; there's no other hope ;
no other way to save a soul o' the cargo/ — The
driver stood up. — ' Hourra, now! hourra!' cried
he ; ' hourra, now — lay holt here ; lay holt, every
one o' you !' — throwing the reins behind him, into
the carriage. — * Whoa — gently, gently, there —
gent — ly — '

" ' Hang on !— hang on !— by G— d, I'll treat.'

- ' Hourra ! ' — « So will I '— ' So will I ! '—

• Hourra, now ; hourra ! ' — The reins gave way ;

the driver fell back ; the carriage heeled off; the

302 REJECTED ARTICLES.

horses tried in vain to stop — the leaders falling
back upon their fellows, when they saw the pre-
cipice, with such power, that, for a moment — a
single moment — while the strong leather cracked
with every plunge — they were all in a heap, to-
gether : — It was a moment of trial, though ; for
the carriage was tumbling over upon the horses,
while they, as if quite sensible of their danger,
were staggering about, with distended nostrils ;
and large, dilated eyes — irresolute — convulsed —
and frightfully weak — breathing, as if they had
been over-board — swimming for their lives ; a
moment of trial ; but no more — a pause, only ;
for, another cry being heard — a cry of despair,
from the poor old man — up went all their heads,
together ; and off, they started, anew.

" ' Lord have mercy upon us !' cried out all the
passengers, with one voice, when they saw the
heavy manes of the horses fly up ; and heard the
crash that followed.

" ' Amen,' said Walter, very quietly ; locking
his uplifted hands ; holding his breath ; and
shutting his eyes, like a coward, — as he thought
of Edith ; and of what her insupportable anguish
would be, when they should come to hear of his
untimely fate.

BROTHER JONATHAN. 303

" ' Amen — Ame n !' — devoutly responded a
steady, clear voice, at his elbow ; — ' our Father,
who art in heav '

" The prayer was unfinished : the horses leaped
forward, again, as if a thunderbolt had fallen
among them ; two of the four broke loose from
the tackling ; — one of which, went over the pre-
cipice, backward, with a scream — the other was
killed upon the spot ; while the remaining pair
struggled and plunged, with terrible force, under
the crushing weight of the carriage. — It gave
way. — 'There we go! — over — over!' cried out
all the passengers, with a shriek of dismay. —

' There we go !' and — over they did go,

sure enough !"

They go over on the right side, that is to say
not over the precipice, and then, in conferring to-
gether on their escape, and the circumstances which
preceded it, the following history takes place.

" ' Oh — yes ! — and that air infarnal kag !' re-
sponded another. — ' I do marvel what's in it ; —
live eels, I guess ? — How it skipped an' bobbed
about, among our toes/

" The driver was that moment examining a
small keg with great apparent solicitude. Every
hoop and every stave underwent a trial with him.

304 REJECTED ARTICLES.

" ( Gold dust, I should think,' said Walter,
who had often read of it in story books, and
poetry : — ' Gold dust, I should think, by his care
of what has been spilt among the straw.'

" ' GooP dust ! fiddle-de-dee ! — some sort o'
seed, more like — ' quoth his neighbour; — ' some
sort o' seed, I guess ; — nothin' that's made o'
gool' is ventered here, on this road, Mister.- —
I say — you, driver — driver! — I say! — what's
in that air kag ; hey ? — It aint yong'un seed ;
is it?'

" ' Inyon seed ! — pooty feller, you ! never met
with any peep seed afore, I guess? have ye?'

" ' Peep seed ! you cross, ill tempered, good for
nothing whelp !' cried our hero ; springing at him :
— ' speak out, sir, speak! tell him, what's in that
air keg?'

" ' Let go o' my throat! let go o' my throat !'

" ' Let him go,' said a young, serious man, with
a mild, but very determined air. — ' Let him go,
sir — would you strangle him? — How can he
speak, now ?'

" ' Never, sir — never — till he speaks out ; alive
or dead. He can do it, well enough : and if he
dooze not, before I count five ; by the God that
made me, T'll pitch him over the precipice, after

BROTHER JONATHAN. 305

the horse ; — aye — and you too, Mr. Hale, if* you
interfere — we'll go, together. — What's in that air
keg, sir ? — one — two — three '

"'Powder — powder — nothin' but powder!'
shrieked the ruffian, feeling himself urged, with
irresistible power toward the cliff.

" * Powder !' — echoed our boy — with a sudden
leap of the heart ; — followed by a deadly sick-
ness : — ' Powder !' — his arms falling away from
the collar of the wretch, as he spoke ; — ' not gun-
powder, surely!'

" 'Ah ; — but I rather guess it is, though !' an-
swered the driver ; ' sneaking off, toward a place
of safety, with a malignant shake of the head,
which our hero was never able to forget, and had
soon cause enough to think of.

"'Gunpowder! — you don't say so!' faltered
out one of the smokers ; — ' not gun-powder ! —
why ! ' — ' Possible !' quoth his companion —
gasping for breath — dropping his under jaw —
and letting his lighted pipe fall out of his mouth,

into the mud. ' Possible !' ' My stars ! —

Ugh !' " * * * * * * * * *

" America — as every body knows, there — is the
land of liberty and equality; ' the land of the
brave; and the home of the FREE/ Wherefore,
it would be no easy matter for a person travelling,

x

30(3 11 EJECT ED ARTICLES.

to persuade a full-blooded republican ' driver,' that
a keg of gunpowder— and a live pig — with warm-
ing pans — cod fish, broad axes, and hollow ware,

paid for inside, were not fit company for half a

score of human beings, paid for, inside — with
lighted pipes."— Vol. II. pp. 40—68.

Nothing in its way can be more admirable than
this whole description of the boy's travel in the
" stage." It is kept up with equal force and
spirit, through forty or fifty pages more. Perhaps
we cannot do better than contrast this scene of
absolute, literal truth, with one of a somewhat
different class. It will serve to shew that our
author is not wedded to any particular style of
composition, but is equally at home in the cloudy
regions of german mysticism as on the face of
the common earth. The following, though wild,
extravagant, and incoherent, is full of eloquent
and passionate beauty. It refers to the hero's
first introduction to those scenes with which all
great cities abound.

" They led him to a sofa. They sang — they
played. His perceptions grew confused. He
thought over all the stories of wood women —
fairies — witchcraft — and sorcery. A thousand
bright flashes of early dreaming, issued from his
young heart, whenever he shut his eyes. The

BROTHER JONATHAN. 307

room — the flowers — the furniture — the lemon tree
— the birds — the pictures — the pretty goblins —
they were like the paraphernalia of sleep, to
him. He was half prepared, for their vanishing ;
half prepared, for a change, whenever he opened
his eyes, whereby they would become giants —
or dwarfs ; or he would find himself at home —
after all — in his own bed. He grew sleepy-—
faint. He felt as if sweet lips were saying a
sweeter incantation over him. He lay down —
he gave himself up, in spite of Harry's admoni-
tion, without one word of prayer, to the drowsy,
dangerous quiet of the place. He slept — he
dreamt ; a small, soft hand was put upon his
forehead. He awoke — he started up. The pres-
sure was gentle — affectionate ; but, unpreme-
ditated— involuntary, perhaps ; yet, he started,
up, quivering with preternatural fervour, through
all his frame. His head swam — his heart reeled
—his limbs were powerless. He knew not where
he was — nor what he meditated : a glowing face
— and large eyes were visible through the dim
light; a profusion of hair — and lips, that pur-
sued his. He felt, as if he were yet sleeping ; he
strove to awake. He felt as if he had gone back,
alive, to the day of mystery and fable : as if, with
all the power and prerogative ; all the grandeur

x 2

308 REJECTED ARTICLES.

. all the bravery, of a man — he had become u

little child, again ; more credulous, than ever ;
believing, as then, whatever he read— whatever
was told him ; haunting the chambers of the sea,
whenever he slept— like that of his own mother,
when he was awake. In short — his heart was full
of woman — his head, of wine.

" Do ye marvel that he grew dizzy ? Do ye
wonder that he grew faint? — or, that, he breath-
ed, after a time, as if his heart were in travail
— every sob, a throe ? — or, that, when he awoke,
there was a strange trouble in his blood ? — or,
that, his hand fell, with convulsive eagerness
upon what he knew, by the touch, to be the hand
of a beautiful woman? or, that, he pursued it,
when it fled, with a cry of passionate longing?
— or, that, when it should have been hastily
withdrawn from his bold — presumptuous — dis-
tracted pressure — it only trembled with fear —
until the alarm of its pulse rang, like electricity,
through every fibre of his frame ? — or, that, a
swift blindness fell upon his eyes ? — or, that, he
heard a loud singing all about him, in the air ?
— or, that, he would have spoken — but could
not — because of his youth — because of his in-
tegrity— because of his great innocence — because
of his love — in the deep, dreadful, hot, luxury

BROTHER JONATHAN. 309

of his thought? — or, that, he drew nigh to the
tempter — and was about — boy, though he was
— to transfer the holy kiss of tried, innocent love,
to the lips of pollution ? — or, that, he knew not
where he was — nor what he wanted ? — or, that,
he grew blind, as it were, and sick, with passion ?
— or, that, he was gathering the strange woman
— the woman of beauty — into his untroubled,
pure bosom, with all his power — in a sort of
delirium — a paroxysm — a wild, ungovernable
fervour, such as he had never felt before, in all his
life ? — or ; do ye marvel, that on seeing — or
dreaming that he saw — the apparition of Edith
— his own — his beloved Edith — pale and sorrow-
ful— before he had betrayed her to the woman ;
before he had profaned her innocent love ; sacri-
ficed her ; violated her image, in his heart ; or
sinned, verily, beyond forgiveness ; do ye marvel
that he, the brave boy, when the spirit of Edith
went by him, thus — awoke, all at once — like a
giant ; sprang away, from the enchantress, with a
sharp cry ; and shook her off — the delicate, bad
creature — from his bosom — as if she were a thou-
sand festering serpents ?

" Thus did he ; thus — and more like a timid
girl, starting from the thraldom of love, just in
time to save herself; trembling — full of sorrow

310 REJECTED ARTICLES.

— and abhorrence — grief — gratitude — and shame:
crushed with a sense of her degradation — at
having been — for a moment, perhaps, under the
influence of mortal treachery ; or, at having felt,
for a moment, perhaps — the unholy contagion of
a bad love : thus did he — more like such a girl
— at such a time — than like a young, adven-
turous man — half crazy, with impure passion ;
half desperate, with wine. Thus did he — the
noble boy. He shook off the woman — went
forth, into the middle of the floor ; smote upon it,
with his foot — until the house trembled — until
a thousand echoes rang through the deserted
chambers, with a noise, like that of a multitude
ascending the stairs — or mustering on every side
of him.

" But he was alone. Harry had left him, asleep.
The woman would have stayed him ; but, when
she looked into his pallid face, there was that, in
it — so awful — so serious — that she went away
abashed, and utterly confounded ; weeping with
shame — perhaps, with sorrow — and covering her
own face, with her hands.

" ' Farewell,' said he ; ' I know not who you
are — nor what. I only know that you have pur-
sued me — till I have come to hate myself. A
little more, and I should have hated you ; all

BROTHER JONATHAN. 311

mankind — all womankind. Nevertheless — I for-
give you/

" He departed."— Vol. II. pp. 412—417.

Where there is any of this kind of writing the
reader may be pretty sure of finding plenty.
What we have given above is a fair specimen of
that portion of it which the present volumes con-
tain. In fact, they include many shorter pas-
sages, and several long scenes, belonging to the
above class of writing, which, together with
much extravagance, blend not a little of extra-
ordinary beauty.

We cannot close our account of this singular
work without unequivocally expressing the very
high admiration that we feel for the powers which
it indicates : for as an indication alone of intel-
lectual power can we accept it — not as a display.
Without being so valuable a work as some others
that might be named among the late productions
of our republican rivals, it is, without any com-
parison whatever, the strongest evidence of high
talent which that country has hitherto put forth.
But whether or not to regard it as a sure promise
of greater things from the same source, is more
than our total want of information respecting its
writer enables us to determine. If Brother Jona-
than is the production of a new hand, and is

31'2 REJECTED ARTICLES.

thrown off in that reckless and unpremeditated
manner which the construction of its plot, &c.
seems to indicate, we would at once pronounce it
to be the precursor of works of the very highest
class, and its writer as destined to occupy a per-
manent place in the very foremost rank of his
age's literature. But if — as we are half-tempted
to fear, from a certain air of practice which pre-
vails throughout — it is only one of many similar
incoherences which its writer has been inflicting
upon his countrymen till they will bear them no
longer, and he has now come over to try his
fortune upon our less fastidious and experienced
judgments, it is a very different matter. In short,
if this is a first production in its way, and its
author is young, we should be accused of extra-
vagance if we were to express the extent of our
hopes as to what may follow it. But if its au-
thor has written two or three such works, we
almost despair of his ever writing a better.

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA.

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA;*

A TALE OF THE GREEN-WOOD-SHADE.

[As far as the writer of the following story is acquainted with
the history of the persons mentioned in it, there is no actual
foundation for its details. But he seems to have read somewhere,
within these few years, a tale in verse, the recollection of which
may have suggested it to him, And he believes, also, that M<le.
de Genlis, in her half historical romance of " Petrarque and
Laure," has imagined a passion between Boccaccio and the
daughter of king Robert of Naples.]

OF all the beautiful vales that wind about among
the beautiful hills of Italy, (like blue veins about
a young, maiden's bosom), there is none so beau-

* Whence, or for what reason, this paper became a " Rejected"
one, I have not been able to learn. Perhaps it was, that some
editor, more sagacious than need be, fancied the writer was hoax-
ing him. And in fact, I must confess that I am a little puzzled
by the paper myself. It professes to be written by the gentleman
whose initials it bears ; and I am bound to offer it as such. But

316 REJECTED ARTICLES.

tiful as that through which the beautiful Arno
lapses along beautifully, towards the blue Medi-
terranean.

We have passed a whole short year in this vale,
reader, and can hit upon no other so compen-
dious method of making thee feel its charms, as
that of reiterating upon it the above charming
epithet, — which even the language of Italy itself
cannot equal, for a certain lingering and liquid
softness.

Among other favours which the Arno confers
upon this vale, in return for the privilege of
gliding along for ever through its green loveliness,
is that of writing its name upon it : Val d' Arno,
or Valdarno. At a certain point of Valdarno, then,
just where its scenery first begins to be most wild
and cultivated, a great forest suddenly starts up
almost from the river's edge, and goes frowning
away towards the brow of an adjacent hill, where

though it undoubtedly includes something of the peculiar man-
ner of that amiable writer, it seems to me to include more that is
not in his manner, but rather in one of the manners of another
writer who has also contributed an avowed portion of this volume.
The truth is, J am half inclined to suspect that an innocent little
deceit has in this instance been practised, and that the story is in
fact an imitation of one of these writers' style, by the other.
But which is the imitated, which is the imitator, is more than I
.shall pretend to determine. — Editor.

BOCCACCIO AND F1AMETTA. 317

its rich cloud-like depths seem to hang upon the
otherwise soft and smiling elevation, like masses
of dark hair upon the forehead and cheeks of a
sweet English woman.

At the period of our story, Giovanni Boccaccio
is said to have held the office of Bard or Minstrel
at the court of Robert, King of Naples. And
whether from disgust at the hollow pageantries
of a court life, or from that morbid turn of feel-
ing which poets and scholars are so apt to give
way to when they are forced to mix in the merely
worldly throng of which they can never form a
part, — he had for a time escaped from all inter-
course with the world of cities, and was fancying
himself content to keep no other company than
his own full thoughts, and those fine echoes and
answers to them which he seemed never to listen
for in vain among the dim glades and under the
twilight gloom of this " forest old."

That the feeling which could prompt the gay
and galliard, the lively and loving Boccaccio to
take up his abode in the solitary hut of a moun-
tain shepherd, must have been a morbid one, who
can doubt ? Perhaps — for he was very young at
the time we speak of, and had not yet begun
to hanker after any other immortality than that
" for ever" which enters into every vow of love

318 REJECTED ARTICLES.

which young lovers are in the habit of pro-
nouncing— perhaps some Florentine beauty had
looked inimically upon him, just when she had
given him least cause to expect it, — as even
Italian beauties will. Or perhaps she had smiled
consentingly, just as he had begun to revel in the
pleasant pains of a lover's despair ; and this had
put him out of sorts : for your youthful, and es-
pecially your poet lover, is hard to please at any
moment or after any fashion but his own.

Be this as it may, certain it is that our hero
had fallen out with everything in the world, but
his pen-knife, — armed with which he used to
betake himself every morning to the dim recesses
of the old wood we have just mentioned, and
carve himself out a wayward and wanton sort of
comfort, by cutting verses upon the smooth bark
of the great Linden trees.

There was a particular part of the wood in
which a noble company of these trees flourished
together, each adapting its growth to that of all
the rest, in a manner which, if any but a lover
had observed it, might have furnished a model
from which the members of more pretending com-
munities might have taken a lesson. It was to
this spot that our sylvan malcontent chiefly
directed his steps; and as practice makes perfect

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 319

in all things — even in writing poetry with a pen-
knife— there is no knowing how far his efforts
might have gone, towards the demolition of this
fine family of " green-robed senators/' — (for a
Linden tree cannot live without its bark, any
more than a lady's lap-dog), — but for a circum-
stance which we are now to relate.

Arriving about noon one day at his accustomed
haunt, full, even to the tip of his pen-knife, of a
sonnet he had composed as he came along, he was
peering about rather impatiently for a fair sheet
of bark on which to inscribe it — when lo ! he
observed, with a feeling of half fearful surprise,
that two or three of his most passionate lucubra-
tions had been detached from their places, and
fairly carried off by some invisible, and (to him)
inconceivable agency !

He dropped his extended penknife among the
long grass and wild flowers that grew about the
roots of the trees — retreated a pace or two from
the spot where he was standing, as if to assure
himself that what he had seen was not an op-
tical trick which his over-excited fancy was play-
ing him — and the first half dozen lines of his new
sonnet went as clean out of his head as if they had
been written by somebody else.

Recovered a little from his first surprise, he

320 REJECTED ARTICLES.

began to cast about him for something like a ra-
tional explanation of this seeming mystery. But
none presented itself that was at all satisfactory.
He believed the wood itself to be entirely free
from human inhabitants, or even visitants, except
himself. It was evident that the writing had not
been defaced by any of the wild animals which he
knew made their green dwellings in the forest, or
even by any of the few shepherds and herdsmen
who alone dwelt on its borders ; for, instead of
being nibbled away irregularly by the teeth of the
first, or carelessly cut and scraped off by the rude
clasp-knives of the second, it had been detached
in the most careful manner, by making an incision
above, below, and on each side of the writing,
and then peeling the whole off together, — leaving
the inner surface of the trunk beneath as smooth
and white as the back of a new shorn sheep.

There was another circumstance, too, which
perplexed our poet not a little. The particular
sets of verses which had so strangely disappeared,
were precisely those which he had piqued him-
self upon the merit of. In short, the being,
whatever it might be, which had thus made so
free with some of his best things, was evidently
not without a very pretty taste for poetry.

This thought at any rate helped to restore our

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 321

wonderer to that state of easy self-complacency
in which, notwithstanding his moody quarrel
with the world, he was by no means slow to in-
dulge himself, when his own poetry was in ques-
tion ; and, instead of perplexing himself further
with an affair that seemed likely to baffle all im-
mediate inquiry, he conned over his new sonnet
again, and having recovered those portions of it
which his late surprise had scared away, he em-
ployed the rest of the day in carefully pen-knifing
it down, at no great distance from the spot from
which the others had so lately become Fugitive
Pieces. He then sauntered slowly towards his
evening retreat, — wondering all the way whatco?//^/
have become of his verses, but feeling less list-
less and unhinged than heretofore, from the fillip
which his spirits had received by the adventure of
the morning-.

O

The next day found our poet earlier than usual
among his Linden trees; on reaching which, how
was his not yet abated surprise of yesterday in-
creased, at finding that his last sonnet had follow-
ed the missing stanzas, and that no trace of it was
left, but the great white hiatus which indicated
where it had been !

He composed no more verses that day, but
passed the whole of it in puzzling his head with

322 REJECTED ARTICLES.

vain conjectures about the mystery, and in de-
vising the means of making it out.

At last it occurred to him, (as it would two days
before, to any one but a carver of love verses upon
lime trees in an old solitary forest), that an act
argued an agency, and that as an agent could
not conveniently proceed without visible instru-
ments, there could be no great difficulty in making
out this important mystery, to any one who
chose to take the pains of prying pretty closely
into it.

Our poet's measures were therefore taken imme-
diately. But before putting them into practice,
there was one thing to be considered. The pur-
loiner of his poetry (for that there was a pur-
loiner seemed now more than probable to our
hero, after he had given two whole days' and one
night's consideration to the subject !) in the first
place evidently sought concealment ; and in the
next place, was of too elegant and tasteful a turn
of mind to be treated impertinently or cavalierly.
Accordingly, our inquirer was tempted to postpone
his investigation for a day or two, in order to see
if chance might not give a natural turn to the dis-
closure ; and in the mean time he determined to
try the taste of his unknown critic once more, by
another copy of verses, which were such particu-

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 323

lar favourites with himself that he had not yet
committed them to bark. He did so on this
evening, and then went home, in lightsomer spirits
than he had felt since he left Naples.

On the following morning he left his bed of
leaves almost as soon as the sun looked in upon
it ; and after satisfying himself that he was by no
means impatient to learn the fate of his last
stanzas, he made his way towards the Linden
trees by the most direct path he knew of; not,
however, without loitering a little by the way, in
order to convince himself that he was in no hurry :
a piece of natural and innocent self-deceit, which,
by the bye, cost him another whole day and
night's increased curiosity and impatience ; to say
nothing of its making him run the risk of catching
his death of cold into the bargain : for at the very
instant that he came, at a sudden turn of the
path, upon the spot where his favourite Lindens
flourished, he heard a rustling sound among the
underwood at the extremity of the little glade,
and caught a glimpse of a white vestment gleam-
ing through the leaves, and saw a still whiter
hand vanish away among them, and leave them
quivering as if with pleasure at its touch.

To couple this unlooked-for appearance with
the equally unlooked-for dzs-appearance of his

Y 2

324 REJECTED ARTICLES,

verses, was the affair of a moment. He flew to
those which he had carved the evening before, and
they were gone.

Here, then, was the mystery explained at once ;
but explained in a way to anything but satisfy
our hero's curiosity. What was to be done in
this case ? To follow the fair fugitive would be
rude, since her wish for concealment was evidently
not coquettish, but sincere. And yet to rest
satisfied with the discovery that his verses had
not been spirited away by superhuman agency,
was quite as little to be thought of. An alterna-
tive presented itself, which promised to satisfy his
curiosity without sacrificing his politeness ; and
this lie at once made up his mind to adopt.

Though he felt that courtesy forbad him to pry
into the comings and goings of this beautiful
plagiarist, (for he had already invested her with
every beauty under heaven,) he had evidently a
perfect right to pass his evenings where he
pleased ; and if he had a fancy, even, for sleep-
ing in the open air these fine summer nights, and
making his bed on the bough of a particular tree,
there could be no doubt whatever that he was
free to indulge it. Accordingly, he spent what
might have seemed to anybody else a more than
reasonable portion of the day in polishing into the

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 325

most graceful and sparkling perfection a stanza
touching the discovery of the morning. This he
carved on a convenient spot, in his best manner,
and -then returned to his hut, to make some little
preparations for his intended alfresco. For, to do
our poet justice, he was not one of those ill-condi-
tioned people who neglect their personal comfort,
and fancy they have taken a distaste to life and its
pleasures, merely because they have happened to
fall upon a particular mode of it which is naturally
unsuited to them. In short, though his naturally
exciteable temperament had led him to feel a sort
of moody anger against certain things and people
among whom he had lately been thrown, he was
too young and full of health to be other than wise ;
his veins were filled with a stream of wholesome
red blood, which ran too freely up and down them
ever to permit him to be blind to the beauties
of that creation which he already felt that he
himself was destined hereafter to assist in beau-
tifying.

We will not follow our hero back to his cottage
dwelling, but fancy that he has been there, and
provided himself with his little wallet of wine and
eatables, not forgetting his graceful cloak of crim-
son velvet, over the collar of which his rich chesnut
curls used to drop clusteringly, when, a month

326 REJECTED ARTICLES.

ago, he justly reckoned himself among the gayest
of Neapolitan gallants. We will fancy, too, that
he has eaten his supper of fruit with more than
usual gusto ; taken an additional cup of Cyprus,
to keep out the cold air; and comfortably esta-
blished himself for the night, among the inter-
twisted branches of the very tree on the stem of
which he had carved his last piquant effusion.

He was not much disposed to sleep ; for, to say
nothing of the novel nature of his couch, with its
everquivering curtains of green leaves, his thoughts,
however pleasing, were of a nature to perplex ra-
ther than soothe — they were so entirely without
any particular point to rest on. So that, after
puzzling himself for a long while, pleasantly enough,
but to no purpose, as to who and what the owner
of the white hand that he still saw perpetually
vanishing away among the hazel leaves could
possibly be, he was fain to yield himself up to that
voluptuous waking dream which the sights and
sounds all about him seemed expressly intended
to excite. There was the misty and scarcely more
than twilight gloom of the old wood. There was
the soft Italian air, sighing gently among the
leaves, and making them whisper and twitter to
each other like birds at love-making. There was the

o

scent of the wild-flowers, steaming up from below,

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 327

like incense from so many fairy censers. And above
all, there was the rich, deep-hearted voice of one
solitary nightingale, (made solitary, perhaps, as our
visionary fancied, by the same cause that made
him so,) bathing all things in a bright flood of
melody, as the moonlight bathes the waters.

That such a state of things as this, was not very
likely to set a poet to sleep, is pretty evident.
Whether or not it did set ours to sleep, is more
than we pretend to have been informed of. Cer-
tain it is that he saw the new day blush to life,
through the leafy lattice- work of his green bed-
room— for the first time, by the bye, since he
had taken to cultivate an intimacy with courtiers.
And he had scarcely time to reckon how dearly he
had been paying for the very equivocal pleasure of
passing for a wit and a fine gentleman, before his
whole soul and senses were absorbed in the object
which now presented itself.

In choosing out the spot that was to serve him
for a bed-room and watch-tower in one, he had of
course taken care that it should command a view
of that particular point of the wood where the
white hand had made its disappearance. And to
this point, be sure, his eyes had been constantly
directed, ever since the light had given him leave

328 REJECTED ARTICLES.

to see it ; and directed so intensely, that, to say
truth, they had no less than three times created
the object they were in search of. So that at last,
when that object did come in reality,' he was by
no means sure that they were not for the fourth
time making a fool of him. But who shall de-
scribe his wondering and breathless attention,
when, as he gazed, that still emerging hand was
followed by a foot to match ; and then, after a
moment's pause, by a face looking like a fawn's
half fearfully from out the leaves, that seemed to
crowd about it lovingly ; and then, after another
moment's pause, the whole form emerged from
among the closing bushes, and having stood for
a-while as if to listen if there was any other sound
than that made by the coming together of the
leaves, stepped forward on tip-toe, with a hushing
motion of the right hand, and with half-open
listening lips, — the very picture, as our poet
thought, of some fabled creature, born of the air,
the twilight, and the leaves.

Alas ! it had been well for both if she had been
such ! It had spared many a pang to two loving
hearts, that should by rights have been lapt for
ever in the Elysium of their own gentleness ! It
h-ad— but stay — we had not need anticipate. The

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 329

sad part of our story will come soon enough of itself,
and will last long enough, without our letting it
interfere with the happy part.

There was a hushing silence all about, as the
beautiful creature kept advancing — every now and
then pausing for a moment, and looking round
half playfully, half timidly, towards the spot from
which she had emerged, as if fearful of being seen
or pursued ; while our poet kept gazing at her more
and more intently, as she came nearer and nearer
to the spot above which he was situated.

At last he saw the lady — (for that she ivas a
lady — a very woman — he was soon pretty well
convinced, if by nothing else, by the eager cours-
ing of his own blood through its channels, and
the tingling sensation which it seemed to carry
with it, even to the very tips of his fingers) — he
saw her approach the very tree in the branches of
which he was couching, and at last come to a full
stop before it.

His heart beat awfully. It fairly frightened
him with its pertinacious knocking : for he had
never felt anything of this kind in, the presence of
those court beauties among whom he had gained
what little experience he possessed in matters of
love. It beat — and beat — and his breath came

330 REJECTED ARTICLES.

shorter and shorter — and he grew sick with a sort
of faint longing, for — he knew not what — unless it
was, to drop from his concealment at the feet of
that fair creature, and tell her that the poet whose
poor verses she had come ail that way to read (all
the way from Florence, for anything he knew to
the contrary) was there at hand, ready to pour
out whole floods of them, with which the bare
sight of her sweet presence had filled his soul to
overflowing.

Meanwhile, the object of this un pronounced
rhapsody was standing almost immediately be-
neath the silent rhapsodist, quietly perusing the
effusion of yesterday. She read it twice from be-
ginning to end, before she perceived the allusion
it contained to the disappearance of its fellows.
But when she did perceive this allusion, into what a
pretty blushing perplexity it cast her ! She felt as
if the poet himself was present in his verses, and was
gazing full upon her, as she gazed on them; and
she half turned round, and made a movement, as
if she would have fled before that eager glance.

Our poet saw her, and was ready to drop from
out his hiding place at the sight ; for he thought
that if once that vision melted away from before
his rapt senses, (for now that the first rush of his

BOCCACCIO AND F1AMETTA. 331

young blood had ceased, he began to fancy it a
vision again,) he should never either behold it
again, or be able to bear the loss of it. But
she turned again, and stood still to re-peruse
the verses ; and he was again still as a statue.

She could scarcely (as he thought) have had
time to read the first couplet again, before a
thought seemed suddenly to strike her. She
looked away from the stem on which the verses
were graven — felt about her slender waist hurried-
ly, as if for something that was concealed in
her girdle — found it — stepped up towards the
tree eagerly — and placing one of her white hands
leaningly against the dark trunk, began to move
the dainty fingers of the other above and on each
side the spot where the verses stood.

There was no time to be lost. She was evi-
dently about to carry them and herself off to-
gether; and now that her furtive visits to the
wood had been noticed, she would of course never
repeat them, and he should equally of course never
see her again.

This latter thought brought back all his self-pos-
session ; and his recollection that she was a mere
woman, and not a vision, came back with it. The
next moment she started almost " like a guilty

332 REJECTED ARTICLES.

thing," at the sound of rustling leaves and crack-
ling branches over head ; and the next, Boccaccio
was kneeling at her feet.

Fiametta (for that was the lady's name — in
thinking of her gentle nature we had almost for-
gotten that she had a name) Fiametta fairly cried
out, from a momentary mixture of terror and sur-
prise at this somewhat startling apparition : for,
coyishness apart, it was a little startling, coming
before her as it did in the midst of a solitary wood,
when she was thinking of nothing less. But we
must do her the injustice to say, that she did not
perform this little female feat by any means after
the most approved method in such cases made
and provided by our modern representatives of
romance heroines, either on the stage, or among
the leaves of the circulating library. The truth is,
she did not perceive anything very frightful in the
sight of a graceful human form, bending silently
at her feet, in that attitude of adoration which
she had been taught to adopt herself, when she
sent up her innocent prayers to the unseen giver
of good ; and therefore, after the first instinctive
movement of surprise, she did not see any reason
whatever for falling into that passion of tears,
screams, and terrified supplications for pity and

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 333

forbearance, which undoubtedly ought, according
to all rule, to have been the immediate consequence
of her situation.

If indeed the object which she saw couching
before her, with its bright eyes eagerly fixed upon
hers, had been a young tiger instead of a young
man, the abovenamed mode of receiving its atten-
tions might have been natural enough, however
unlikely to answer its intended end. But under
the " existing circumstances," we cannot but
think that our heroine acted the more natural
part, and certainly the more agreeable one, in
merely uttering a faint hurried cry, like that of a
bird scared from its covert, and then bounding
back for a space, and shrinking up into herself, as
it were, as she gazed silently upon the silent being
before her. At the same time, her countenance
shewed all the marks of the prettiest wonderment
in the world ; but a wonderment, withal, by no
means either angry or terrified.

But what is our poet doing and saying all this
while? Why, not moving a jot from his first
attitude, nor uttering a single word ! And yet
(for we must not conceal the truth) he had knelt
at ladies' feet before now, and was never accused
of any lack of words or impediment of utterance
on such occasions.

334 REJECTED ARTICLES.

In fact, the loves and beauties of a court and
city life — even the court of the excellent King
Robert, and the city of Naples itself — however
pleasant and proper they may be, are something
different from those which are to be met with
among woods and glades : that is to say, when
any are to be met with among the latter places at
all. And our poet was not the person to pass o^er
that difference, or fail to appreciate it. In the
gentle yet blooming form of Fiametta, he beheld

& J C5

what he had never seen before, even in fancy ;
though he could not help feeling, — as he gazed on
it, and it grew more blooming every moment by
the blushes that broke out all over it,— that at least
he ought to have seen it in fancy — else, of what
avail was his poetry to him ? And he felt, for a
passing moment, that poetry must be but a poor
thing, if it could be put to open shame, and its
votary be surprised and dumb-foundered, before a
being who, from her air and appearance, (to say
nothing of her strangely wild and sylvan attire,)
had evidently never undergone the process of a
lover's adoration before, and scarcely seemed to
know what it could mean.

But Boccaccio was luckily a poet, as well as a
poet laureate. It is no wonder, therefore, that all
these artificial modes of considering the matter

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMF.TTA. 335

presently melted away, as the bright creature
before him recovered her natural and graceful
self-possession, and without shewing any very
determinate signs of departure, permitted him to
rise from his knee, and address a few phrases to
her (which, by the bye, we are bound to confess
were by no means skilfully constructed ones)
touching the situation in which the parties at that
moment found themselves.

Oh ! what bright looks and what tender talk
now ensued, between this pair of gentle sylvans !
for each had been more than half enamoured of
the other before they met, and one soft interchange
of eyebeams stood them in stead of all the " give
me leave to introduces'' that they ought, by rights
of wrong, to have waited for. In a word, each
saw in the other what each had long been looking
and sighing for without knowing it ; and of their
now meeting eyes was born a love that lasted — too
long.

Thus far our information has enabled us to be
tolerably precise, as to the " whereabout" of at
least one of our lovers. And we are enabled to
add, in regard to the other, that she had been
living, ever since her birth, in a great solitary
castle at the farther extremity of the old wood ;
splendidly attended, and suffered to run almost

336 REJECTED ARTICLES.

wild about the grounds, and the adjacent forest,
like a fawn. But she knew nothing of her birth
and condition, any more than that her father
sometimes visited her from a great way off, where
he lived. Except him, she had seen no one that
she could remember, but the various attendants
that were about her. These treated her as their
mistress in everything, except that they did not
seem to like her to be out of their sight for long
together ; — though we have seen that she had con-
trived to be so two or three times, since her first
discovery of the poetical Linden trees.

All this she herself had told our (now her)
hero, before they had been together a lover's half
minute — that is to say a rather long half-hour.
Moreover, she assured him that she was " very
happy." But it appeared evident, from some-
thing which dropped from her at the same time,
that it was the happiness of a bird that is born
in a great gilded aviary, and passes its life half
in singing for joy at what it has, and half in
pining after what it wants, without knowing what
that is.

If we piqued ourselves on being accomplished
story-tellers, we should now proceed to edify the
reader with an account of the various love scenes
which followed the above meeting. But we do not.

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 337

If we pique ourselves on anything, it is on
having more respect for the passion of love
itself, than desire of showing our skill in develop-
ing its subtleties. So we shall here drop the
curtain of concealment upon our gentle pair of
wooers, and leave them to their own devices for
a brief space — brief in the world's calendar —
and brief even in their reckoning of it — but yet
filled to overflowing with thoughts and images
and sentiments, that spread themselves out
endlessly over their whole after life, and made
that little space seem longer than all the rest,
and yet, somehow or other, briefer than a passing
thought.

No — never shall it be said that we sought to
pry impertinently into that most holy of all pre-
cincts, the spot which is hallowed by the pre-
sence of two lovers. Let the ground all about
them, as far as their bright eyebeams can dart,
be sacred as Apollo's grove ! And let their
words and looks and actions be as much their
own as their unpronounced thoughts ! From
us the reader shall never hear a whisper of what
passed between these lovers, from the moment
they became such. Let it suffice that they did
become lovers — no " star-crossed " pair more true.
But how their great love showed itself— whether

338 REJECTED ARTICLES.

in mere eye-language, or sigh-music, or whispered
words,

" O dolci baci, o cosa altra pin cara,"

is more than we pretend to know a syllable about.
No — we leave them to each other ; — the only com-
pany lovers ever care to keep, and into which
none else should intrude, even in fancy.

Many summer days had come and gone, and
few of their suns had risen without seeing Boc-
caccio and Fiametta on their way to meet each
other, beneath the deep shade of the favourite
Linden trees. When one evening, as our bard
was musing within himself on a world of matters
touching the future and the past, (that is. to say,
to-morrow and yesterday), but utterly unheeding
of the present, a messenger reached him from his
royal master at Naples, requiring his early pre-
sence, to assist in giving eclat to a fete of unri-
valled splendour, which was soon to take place
at court, but the precise occasion of which was
enveloped in a sort of courtly mystery.

This intelligence seemed to come upon our young
dreamer " like a thief in the night." It waked
him to a remembrance that there was something
else in the world besides day-break, Linden trees,
and lovers' talk. Not that this made him mi-

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 339

happy. On the contrary, it seemed to open be-
fore him a new and almost endless vista of bright
hopes — every one of which seemed stamped, as it
were, with the image of his Fiametta : for he felt
that she was his, though they had not yet ex-
changed vows, or even recollected that there were
such things as vows in the world.

They must part for a time. That was evi-
dent. But how should they meet again ? And
when? And under what characters? And to
what end ? These, and a whole string, or rather
crowd of other questions, all came rushing upon
his awakening fancy at once, and perplexing it for
replies.

" But away with fears and misgivings !" thought
our ardent hero, in the buoyancy of youthful spirits
that came back with his new-born hopes. " My
royal master is good and kind — and has loved, him-
self, they say, and therefore will not turn ungently
from the tale of my love — and I shall gain his quick
leave to return here, and seek out the father of
my sweet mistress — and we will tell him how
truly we love — and he shall join our hands, under
a rain of tearful blessings— and we will live
here, in our own forest world — and I will so
people it with the bright beings of my fancy,

z2

340 REJECTED ARTICLES.

and so beautify it with enamoured thoughts, that
the lovers of after times shall make love-pilgrimages
to the spot where Fiametta and Boccaccio met,
and loved, and lived, and " — died, he was go-
ing to pronounce, like all the rest, triumphant-
ly : but the thought struck a chill upon his heart,
and put to flight in a moment all his fond ima-
ginations ; for now that word had acquired a
new and sad meaning. To die, meant, not to
part from life — which had never yet entered
his young imagination — but from Fiametta — -
which he was at this very moment called upon
to do.

There was no time for pondering on the summons
he had received. If he set out on the day after to-
morrow, he would only just have time to reach
Naples by that appointed for the solemn festival.
There was nothing left, therefore, but to prepare for
his departure. So he breathed forth a blithe de-
fiance to the sad images that a word had conjured
up — thought away for a moment the interval be-
tween " now'1'' and that other " now" which was
to make him so happy — and then laid himself
down upon his simple couch, and fairly wept him-
self to sleep with fond yearnings after the meeting
of to-morrow.

BOCCACCIO AND FlAMETTA. 341

Let that meeting, more than all the rest, be
sacred from sight. Let it suffice to know that
the lovers parted, as they met, happy in each
other's smiles, and still more happy in the sweet
tears that broke through them. And Boccaccio,
without waiting for the morrow, hurried at once
on his way to Naples. Nor did his journey lack
the accompaniment of glad songs, which told of
his happy return to the dark forest of Valdarno,
and the dark eyed beauty that dwelt upon its
borders.

On reaching Naples the day before the festival,
our minstrel (for he must now put on that cha-
racter for a time) found that no one could give
him any information, as to the occasion of this
extraordinary gathering together of all the nobles
of the kingdom at the court of King Robert ;
though many strange rumours were afloat, assign-
ing all sorts of incomprehensible reasons, and
among others, that either a new queen was to be
presented to them, or what seemed still more
unlikely, (for the king had never been married,)
an unexpected heir to the throne and kingdom.

But all this, and even all the kind and eager
greetings that met him on his return to Naples,
(for he was a great favourite with everybody,)

342 REJECTED ARTICLES.

were "caviare" to our poet lover. He was
thinking of when it would all be over, and he
should be on his happy return to his now chosen
retreat in the old forest of Valdarno, and within
sighing distance of its sweet sylvan queen. Even
the brilliant court beauties, that glided stately by
him as he made his way through the well known
avenues of the palace, with their earnest faces
intent on the preparations for the morrow, did
not stir his still thoughts a jot. They had never
touched his heart ; and now that that was occu-
pied, his senses were asleep.

Meanwhile, time passes — and the morning of
the festival is come — and the great hall of the
palace is thrown open — and the courtly guests
are arriving in companies of two, three, four, five
together, and moving along silently over the velvet
floor, — their stately plumes nodding and sway-
ing about loftily till they reach their appointed
places, and then, after one deep bend forwards,
settling into a quivering stillness as their wearers
finally take their seats—and the banquet tables
are spread out profusely, with all but the hot
refections that are to be put on when the feast is
about to commence— and the tall guards stand
motionless at the lofty entrances—and the trimly

BOCCACCIO AND FJAMETTA. 343

attired pages are passing their slim forms hither
and thither daintily — and there is a hushing and
eager stillness over the whole scene.

Let us now look away for a moment, and then
turn to the scene again, when the more lordly of
the guests are arrived, and it has put on its whole
rich completeness. Entering upon it from the
lofty antichamber into which the great hall opens,
we will place ourselves in the great gaping door-
way itself, and look around us, just before the
signal has been given for the banquet to com-
mence.

Right in front stretches out, strait as a line,
the rich foot-cloth of white velvet painted all over
with flowers, on which the king and his chief
nobles have just passed up the hall to their high
places. The rest of the floor is laid all over with
crimson velvet ; and for a space on each side the
centre foot-cloth, there is a vacancy, for the pages
and attendants to move about freely. On each
side of the hall, from end to end, are placed the
tables at which are sitting, face to face, the
second rank of guests, — the princely plumes and
glittering tiaras of the dames alternating brilliant-
ly with the dark dropping curls of the unbonneted
cavaliers, all along the double line of perspective ;
while, between these at intervals, as they move

344 REJECTED ARTICLES.

gracefully to address each other, we catch quick
glances of the glittering table furniture, and see
the pyramids of ornamental confectionary, and
rich clusters of flowers, stand motionless. This
part of the scene is finished, midway in height on
each side, by the rich old tapestry which lines
the walls, — the still and absorbing gloom of which
contrasts quaintly with the busy brilliance which
it shuts in.

Now, passing the eye upward a little on either
side, it rests upon the temporary galleries which
have been erected for the third rank of guests,
who must be content on this solemn occasion to
be spectators merely. These galleries run parallel
with the side tables ; their gorgeously carved and
gilded fronts projecting just even with the inner
line of the table guests below. Here, in these
galleries, the show of beauty is still more brilliant
than below ; the plumed heads and jewelled necks
being crowded more closely together, and the
seats rising one behind another as they recede ; so
that the bright shew reaches up to the arched and
painted ceiling of the hall.

Midway between these galleries, from the cen-
tre of the arched ceiling, hang the pyramids of
light that illuminate the whole scene — circle
rising above circle, and diminishing as they rise,

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 345

till the upper one does but just leave space for the
great twisted cord of crimson silk which supports
them to pass through, and end underneath in a
heavy pear-shaped tassel.

Now, passing the eye downward again towards
the farther end of the hall, it falls upon the
crowning richness of this bright scene. There,
on a platform raised three steps above the floor,
stands the royal table, bent inwards to a half
circle, corresponding in size with the side ones.
The surface we cannot see ; but from its hither
edge depends a drapery of purple velvet, hanging
down to the ground in heavy flutings — heavy with
the rich embroidery-work of gold that runs round
its lower edge.

On this table stand no flowers, nor fantastical
ornaments ; bat only a gorgeous profusion of
vessels, of every shape, and for every use that
can serve at a great festival ; and all golden : — not
polished and glittering, as if alive with the
glancing lights that they fling back from them ;
but heavy, massive, dead, as if they absorbed the
rich yellow rays, and grew richer and heavier as
they stood.

Here and there among them, you may dis-
tinguish jewelled cups and chalices, not sparkling,
but glowing, with the mingled hues of the grate-

346 REJECTED ARTICLES.

ful emerald — the streaming topaz — the smiling
ruby — the tender sapphire — the intense amethyst
— the burning carbuncle — and the everchanging,
infinite-hued opal.

Round the furthermost side of this semicircle
of clustering gorgeousness are seated (six on each
side the centre) the twelve chief nobles of king
Robert's dominions ; and in the centre of all —
distinguished from the rest only by his jewelled
crown — sits the noblest of them all, no less in
mind than in mien and bearing ; — the good, the
gracious, the graceful,, the kind-hearted, the high-
thoughted king himself, — more kingly in his
proud want of all pride than the merely vain ones
of the earth can conceive.

Almost immediately behind the king, (serving
at once as a dark ground to set off, and a glowing
richness to finish, that part of the scene), there
falls from ceiling to floor, and from side to side of
the hall, a drapery, full to an almost cumbersome
profuseness, of crimson velvet — all of one uni-
formly rich yet sober intensity, and only broken
at top by a second set of draperies, looped up
into heavy folds, which take a tent-like form in
the centre, and are finished at the edge by a
deep embroidered border, and a dropping fringe of
gold.

BOCCACCIO AND FiAMETTA. 347

But enough of the mere externals of this
courtly scene. Its gorgeous glories are dazzling
our eyes, and keeping them too long away from
our story.

What has become of our minstrel, amidst all
this splendour? Be sure he has not been for-
gotten by his princely master and friend — made
too princely by his high nature, not to feel, that
a poet's presence graces the proudest feast, and
that a poet's friendship adds a finishing lustre
to the brightest crown.

The place assigned to Boccaccio was one which,
while it made him conspicuous in the eyes of the
whole great assembly, shewed off the fine unifor-
mity of the scene, by slightly breaking in upon it.
To every other object on which the eye seemed
called upon to rest, it might, by looking in an
opposite direction, find a corresponding object to
match. But the minstrel was seated alone, ia
that otherwise vacant space left on the raised
platform by the inward sweep of the royal table.
His gracious master himself had assigned him
that place : for though he seldom remembered that
there was but one king in his dominions, he
never forgot that there was but one Boccaccio.

There our young bard sat — his head modestly
arid gracefully bent forward — his eyes half-closed

348 REJECTED ARTICLES.

and cast upon the ground — his air half-abashed,
half abstracted — and motionless as a marble
statue.

He was at that moment enjoying his glorious
poet-privilege, of living in two states of being at
once — each the best of all other states in its way.
His imagination was soaring to the high and
bright regions of poesy, in search of thoughts
and images to fulfil his appointed task ; and his
heart was walking humbly upon the green earth,
far away among the Linden trees of Valdarno.

We have not yet mentioned, that at the king's
right hand stood a vacant chair. Here, then, no
doubt, centered the high mystery of the hour.
He turned, and gave a momentary glance at that
unfilled seat — a flush of grave joy passed over his
face — and he rose up.

In an instant the busy hum was hushed, and
an utter silence seemed to fall over the whole as-
sembly like a misty cloud.

After a moment's pause, and a look of proud
pleasure cast all around him, the king spoke.
His address was brief and simple ; not without
that terseness which it seems in the very nature
of kings to affect. He said, that he had to thank
Heaven, and he did thank it night and morning,
for a reign which had hitherto been as happy to

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 349

him as the sight of his people's happiness could
make it. He said, that the love they had ever
shewn for him was no less grateful to his heart,
than that which he felt for them. He said, that
one thing alone had seemed wanting to both, to
complete the happy union between them, and
make it a bond of mutual hope as well as joy.
" That want," he added, after a pause, during
which those who were near him might have seen
a sweet thrill of delight tremble round his affec-
tionate mouth, and his eyes fill with tears, which
kept standing there while he spoke, — " That
want, I fondly think, is this happy day to be
supplied. For sixteen years I have been cherish-
ing a treasure, which I have concealed from the
eyes of the world with a miser's care ; but only
till I could try its worth, and prove it to be a
treasure, such as it becomes a beloved king to offer
to the people of his love. I have proved it — I
have found it that treasure — and I now present it
to the admiring eyes, and commend it to the
grateful hearts, of those whom it will, I fondly
hope, one day help to make as happy as I have
tried to make them."

So saying, he turned half round where he stood
— motioned with his hand — and as he did so, the

350 REJECTED ARTICLES.

great velvet curtain, that hung closed behind him,
began to open in the centre, and gather itself
away into gorgeous cloud-like folds towards the
sides of the hall. At the same moment the king
stepped back a pace or two, and led forth from
beneath it, a form whose gentleness so tempered
its beauty, that the gazers seemed to love it at
once, even in the midst of the admiring awe and
surprise that the first sight of it threw over
them.

" Behold," said Robert, " the daughter of your
king !»

In an instant a shout was uttered through the
hall, that seemed to strike against the vaulted
roof as if for escape. It shook the flames of
the tapers till they quivered, and seemed to pene-
trate through all the inanimate objects till they
trembled as they stood. But its utterers scarcely
heard it at all — so absorbed were they in the busy
thoughts and feelings of the moment.

There was one present who heard that shout —
and it shook her heart with an unknown fear — and
she sank silently into the seat that was near her —
and held her father's hand — and pressed it trem-
blingly.

There was another who heard it with a grave

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. 351

joy — and it lifted him where he stood, and seemed
to place him on that highest of thrones, built up
of the hearts of his people.

There was one who heard it not at all. Boccaccio
had looked upon the scene with an indifference
amounting almost to impatience, till towards the
latter part of the king's address. But when he
talked of having cherished a treasure, and " con-
cealed it from the eyes of the world," a vague
feeling of — he scarcely knew what — seemed to
shoot through his frame, and shake it with a
strange fear ; and his attention was instantly
aroused to a pitch of intense fixedness.

As the king paused, and motioned with his
hand, a fatal presentiment seemed to seize upon
Boccaccio's breast, as it were with bodily fingers,
and almost stop his breath : but still he gazed at
the great mysterious curtain, which now began
to move. His eye seemed to pierce like an arrow
through the opening. At length the heavy folds
drew back, and he heheld — his gentle Fiametta !
— beheld her only for a moment — but long
enough to feel that she was not his, and never
could be.

The icy coldness that had been for the last few
moments gathering about his heart, seemed to

REJECTED ARTICLES.

settle into its very centre — a dull, dead weight
fell upon his brain — his limbs trembled and
bent beneath him as if palsy-stricken — and
(unobserved) he sunk lifeless on the spot where
he stood.

That great shout had no more power to wake
him from his trance, than an infant's whisper.
He never thoroughly awoke from it again. When
the momentary surprise and joy of the assembly
had subsided, and the banquet was about to com-
mence, Boccaccio's situation was discovered, and
he was taken from the hall.

He left Naples that very night, and was heard
of no more for many months. When he was heard
of, it was in his native Florence ; where his fine
spirit was flinging itself away recklessly, upon the
loose pleasures of a licentious city.

As for his sometime mistress, the splendours
of a court life disturbed and perplexed her at
first ; then dazzled and delighted her. But when
she afterwards became the wife of the Prince of
Arragon, (to whom her father had contracted
her before he took her from her retreat), the
twilight shades and smooth stemmed Linden
trees of the old forest of Valdarno, haunted her
fancy for ever, like a dream, and cast a dim hue

BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA.

353

of thought over her face, which did not make it
less fair.

And now, do not let us leave the conclusion of
our story sadder than it need be. Let us believe
that if Boccaccio had not, in his early youth, met
with this ill-starred " affair of the heart," he
would have kept aloof from those scenes into
which his sad thoughts threw him, and the world
have been without that famous " Decameron"
which those scenes at once impelled and qualified
him to write.

SCA-

END.

LONDON:
IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.

Patmore, Peter George
5H5 Imitations of celebrated

authors 4th ed.

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